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Man's Harmonious 
Development 

Five Lectures 

By 

FRANK H. WINTER, B. A. 



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THE WESTERN METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 

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COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY 
FRANK H. WINTER. 



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CONTENTS. 

LECTURE PAGE 

I. The Physical, Capacity, n 

II. The Social, Capacity, 38 

III. The Intellectual, Capacity, ... 69 

IV. The Moral. Capacity, 99 

V. The Spiritual, Capacity, . . . .131 

The Conclusion, .155 

5 



INTRODUCTION. 

The: happiness and the development of man for 
time and eternity is one of the profoundest problems 
the mind can entertain. 

If the study of those things which have to do 
with the earth and sky are interesting and necessary 
to the highest delight and usefulness of men, how 
much more interesting and necessary must be the 
study of man himself. 

The poet Pope said : 

" The proper study of mankind is man." 

Over the gate leading into the ancient city of 
Delphos was this inscription, "Know thyself." 

The masses, however, do not appreciate the value 
nor the beauty of the study of man, his destiny, and 
the means to that end. New interest is being awak- 
ened we are glad to note. Men are rinding out that 
they will be happy and develop in proportion to the 
thought, time, and efforts put forth in the study of 
their being and relationships. 

One reason why the study of man in the broadest 
manner has not been studied more by the masses, is 
that the usual presentation of this question has been 
too scientific, lengthy, and abstruse. 

If the masses are induced to study the nature of 
their being, and to follow some principle which has 
for its object the ideal life, it must be set before them 
in a brief and comprehensive way. 
7 



8 Introduction. 

All men have a feeling within themselves that 
they must realize the ideal within. But how to do 
that is the question. The process of analysis is still 
going on, while the process of synthesis has not kept 
pace. Man knows himself by parts, but he does not 
know himself fully as a symmetrical, balanced being. 

Man desires to be happy, strong, and well. It is 
God implanted. Christ Himself said, "I am come 
that ye might have life, and that ye might have it 
more abundantly." Creation and redemption were 
for the happiness of man. 

God created us the climax of all His creation, 
and put every needful thing within our grasp, and 
has given us every means necessary for our joy and 
development. 

God knows us, and He knew just how to provide 
for us. It is our business to learn the secret of 
adaptation. 

But how evident it is to every thinking mind 
that there is not that degree of happiness and growth 
of complete manhood and womanhood there 
should be ? 

See how much we suffer physical pain, disease, 
and premature death! Note the shameful discord, 
dishonesty, and perplexities in the social life of men, 
all the way from the home to world relations ! Re- 
gard with shame the amazing amount of ignorance 
and superstition among us ! Note in the individual 
life and in the public life how audaciously and reck- 
lessly the moral nature is set aside ! And lastly, 
bemoan the sad lack of true spirituality among the 



Introduction. 9 

Is there room, for discouragement? No! A 
thousand times no ! The joy of progress and victory 
is seen on every side. The bright sunbeams of a 
new day have already risen. 

But notwithstanding all the facts of progress, we 
must acknowledge that we have not made, neither 
are we at the present making, that degree of ad- 
vancement compatible with the means at hand and 
the ability given. There has not been that rich, 
harmonious, symmetrical development in the com- 
posite nature of man there should have been. Man 
is one-sided ; he lacks harmony and proportion. 

The reason for this just criticism is very evident. 
The whole of man's being has been neglected; or 
some capacities have been attended to at the expense 
of this or that one. The child and the man has not 
been taught plainly and persistently that he is a 
composite being. In other words, that he is a being 
of several capacities. He has not been taught that 
these several capacities composing his composite 
being must be developed in harmony with each 
other, and that this harmony must find its ideal in 
a divine Model given by God Himself. 

Man has a vague idea of his complex nature ; but 
just how these different capacities should be har- 
monized together, and all find their true pattern in 
the God-given model, is not fully understood. 

No system or philosophy has been presented 
within a limited space covering the ground we have 
just spoken of. Such a philosophy is greatly needed. 

Man is a composite being. He has five different 



io Introduction. 

capacities. By capacity we simply mean the means 
whereby man is expressed, and the character of 
these. The soul is one, and is not divided into sev- 
eral arbitrary compartments we know, but it must 
adapt itself to the duties and relations of life as man 
*is created to meet them. These, as we have said, 
are capacities. 

We have these capacities treated in so many sci- 
ences; namely, physiology, sociology, psychology, 
moral philosophy, and theology. These in turn 
prove the classification we have made. The diffi- 
culties which confront the masses, relative to a 
proper understanding of man's nature and harmoni- 
ous development, are many and great. The different 
sciences are lengthy, technical, numerous, and ab- 
struse. In the second place, none of these sciences 
tell us just what man is as a complex being, how 
his different capacities may be harmonized, and 
where that harmony must find its origin. 

We shall set forth each capacity in a separate 
lecture, and by the time the last lecture is reached 
we shall have crossed and recrossed each capacity 
many times with the object of the full outcome in 
view, to the end that you may be able to appreciate 
the conclusion. 

We shall deliver this course of letcures, entitled 
Alan's Harmonious Development, under the follow- 
ing heads: I. Physical Capacity; II. Social Capac- 
ity ; III. Intellectual Capacity ; IV. Moral Capacity ; 
and V. The Spiritual Capacity. 



LECTURE I. 
THE PHYSICAL CAPACITY. 

God's Word tells us that "The body is the temple 
of the Holy Spirit. A temple ! What a beautiful 
picture looms up before us in that one word, Temple ! 

See its foundation, its beautiful and symmetrical 
columns, its high and majestic walls, its graceful 
domes, and the blazing spires as they reflect the light 
of the sun ! The body is a temple ! A temple of an 
immortal soul, the image of the Great Architect 
Himself ! What an honor ! 

Indeed, the body is more than a temple. It is 
the servant of the soul. With reference to its maj- 
esty, the poet Young has said : 

" How august, how complicate, how wonderful 
Is man !" 

To see a well formed man or woman, erect, 
strong, full of life and noble aspirations, is one of 
the grandest sights mortal eyes can look upon. The 
Greeks delighted in the cultivation of the beautiful. 
Their whole life and philosophy centered in the evo- 
lution of the beautiful. And no race of people on 
the face of the earth has ever attained to that beauty, 
symmetry, and strength of body as did the ancient 
Greeks. 



12 Man's Harmonious Development. 

As Americans we can not say that we possess 
any national pride or distinction in the beautiful and 
symmetrical development of the body. There is, 
however, new interest manifested along this line. 
This means much for coming generations. Many 
families take health journals ; systematic instruction 
is given in many of our schools and colleges looking 
toward a perfect physical manhood and womanhood ; 
free lectures on the subjects of health, sanitary pro- 
visions, and the effects of alcohol and nicotine are 
given from time to time in many of our larger towns 
and cities; while nearly every paper, magazine, and 
daily devote ample space to the discussion of those 
subjects which have to do with the health, strength, 
and beauty of the body. 

We are coming to understand that the health and 
the strength of our bodies are very largely in our 
own hands. Inheritance has taken the place of cruel 
fate. Hope has taken the place of despair. 

We have come to know that health may be held 
or regained according to well established principles. 
We are also learning that the great question is not 
so much a matter of cure, as a matter of prevention. 

But if disease, sickness, or deformity does stare 
us in the face, we have learned that a cure is not 
so much a matter of money, as it is knowledge and 
will power. It is marvelous what fresh air, sun- 
shine, proper bathing, good food, pure water, exer- 
cise, will power, and cheer will do, if properly ap- 
plied. 

The time is not far distant when many of the 



The Physical Capacity. 13 

physical complaints the masses make will arouse the 
same feelings of pity and mistrust as drunkenness, 
nicotine poison, or other known violations do. 

To injure the body by any act of omission or 
commission wittingly is a sin. That the individual 
and the public mind are awakening to this fact is 
cheering indeed. No one but a simpleton would 
even think of saying to-day, "If I injure my health 
or waste my strength it is nobody's business." 

And we are coming to understand that character, 
life, and destiny is, to a wonderful degree, influenced 
greatly by the health and the strength of the body. 
"Mens sana in corpore sano" is an ancient adage, 
but it contains much truth. 

The health and strength of the body should not 
only concern greatly the individual, but it should 
concern deeply the State. 

The State should not grant marriage licenses to 
any applicant who is a drunkard, kleptomaniac, idiot, 
insane, blind, deaf, dumb, or having any disease that 
could be transmitted to his offspring. 

The individual belongs to society, and if he is 
not capable of taking care of himself society must 
care for him. And society has a right to protect 
itself. 

Then again such care would be an act of mercy 
to those who might in after life be compelled to en- 
dure a period of terrible suffering. 

As a matter of mercy to unborn generations, to 
the expenses of the county and the State, and to the 
safety of the public, every man and woman who pro- 



14 Man's Harmonious Development. 

pose to be united in marriage should be compelled 
to undergo an examination before a competent phy- 
sician. If such examination reveals any serious dis- 
ease that would be detrimental either to fmsband or 
wife, or to their offspring, no marriage license 
should be granted. 

It is a well-known fact that but few persons could 
now pass a perfect physical examination. The dis- 
eases of humanity tabulate up to the thousands. If 
the body were better cared for, the influence on the 
moral nature would be great also. 

But so far as we are concerned, we are what we 
are. But what we may become physically is the 
question. God in His infinite love and wisdom has 
so ordered His laws, that if we obey them we may 
to a surprising degree regain that health, form, and 
strength which should have been ours at birth. 

It is a law if any organ or faculty is defective, 
if brought into a perfect environment, that defective 
organ or faculty will be made perfect. 

All physical defects were brought about in the 
first place by disregarding or setting aside the laws 
of nature. Hence the only way to find restoration is 
to get back to nature's laws. 

God never intended that there should be con- 
sumption, indigestion, cancer, rheumatism, blind- 
ness, aches, and pains. These are but the results of 
man's ignorance and foolishness. These statements 
can not be too strongly declared. The masses seem 
to imagine that disease, pain, and sickness are nec- 
essary burdens imposed upon humanity. Far from 



The Physical Capacity. 15 

it indeed. The transgressor must suffer of course. 
Such suffering, however, is the divine index finger 
pointing out just where man is making his blunder. 
Let man return to God and His laws, and these 
painful warnings must disappear. Nothing so 
strongly and plainly points out to us our ignorance 
and sin as the fearful amount of deadly diseases that 
haunt humanity. And that the minds of men have 
not generally seen this question in this light still 
more emphatically declare their weakness and stu- 
pidity. It is a shame, thrice a shame, that the causes 
and the remedies of pain and disease have not, 
and are not, more generally studied and known. It 
is no wonder that ignorant and superstitious people, 
in order to be well, happy, and strong, have resorted 
to so-called Christian Science, faith cures, mind 
cures, magnetic healing, and other quackeries ad in- 
finitum. 

We insist that if the laws of nature are obeyed 
and assisted, pain, disease, and sickness must vanish. 

Even in organic trouble, such as cancer, etc., 
such would have been impossible if nature's laws 
had always been obeyed. Soul disease can only be 
cured by the prodigal returning to the Father. Sim- 
ilarly the body can only be healed by the transgressor 
coming back to God's physical laws, or nature's laws, 
as we sometimes say. 

Take the dreaded disease consumption as an 
illustration of what can be done if men conform to 
the laws of merciful nature. Thousands to-day are 
regaining their health, the roses are blooming again 



16 Man's Hariuonious Development. 

on the cheeks, the eyes once more look playful and 
bright — all due to the fact that these have simply 
lived out in God's fresh air and sunshine. 

It is not our object in this lecture to go into de- 
tail, but to set forth the main principles which have 
to do with the health, strength, and form of the 
body. We shall discuss briefly the following sub- 
jects: Food, Drink, Clothing, Shelter, Exercise, 
Sleep, Cleanliness, Open Air and Sunshine, Self- 
Cc ol, Sexuality, The Voice s and The Carriage 
c. _..e Body. 

Food. 

The subject of food, so far as the health, 
strength, and the beauty of the body are concerned, 
is a very important one. It is very quickly seen how 
good or bad food tells upon the bodies of animals. 
The difference between poor horses and good horses 
is a matter of food, more than a matter of blood. 

In the provision of food for human beings espe- 
cially, two things must be kept in mind; namely, 
the quantity and the quality of the food. If the 
quantity is deficient, the health, strength, and ap- 
pearance of the body must be weak and jaded. If 
the quality of the food is not well proportioned, a 
corresponding debility must be the result. 

It requires intelligence and education to properly 
select and prepare food for human beings. In the 
early ages of the world the people knew nothing of 
the physiology or chemistry of their bodies, nor of 
the chemistry of the food they ate. They knew noth- 



Ths Physical Capacity. 17 

ing as to how their food should be prepared and 
cooked. Fortunately, however, nature helped them 
by furnishing them with an abundance of wild meat 
and plenty of room to raise what little grain they ate. 

Conditions have changed since that time. Thou- 
sands of articles are put upon the market for food. 
And many are the devices for preparing the food. 
Many of the food products put upon the market 
to-day are totally unfit for food. And many of the 
ways of preparing food are wholly inadequate 1 ' the 
demands of the body. 

Then the problem of the food question is further 
complicated by the fact that some are sick, some 
have one disease and some another, some do mind 
work and others physical work, some are old and 
some young, some are in one kind of climate and 
some are in another. That all of these conditions 
and demands can be met by preparing for all the 
same kind of food in the same way is absurd and 
unscientific. 

That any Irish biddy is able to select and prepare 
food for people who differ in the conditions and de- 
mands I have just mentioned would excite mirth in 
the minds of the intelligent if the question was not so 
serious. But it is an astounding fact that many men 
pay seventy-five to two hundred dollars per month 
to competent persons to feed and take care of their 
horses, while they pay only from eight to twelve 
dollars per month to the cook who prepares the food 
for himself and family. 

The average farmer reads his farm journals to 



iS Man's Harmonious Development. 

find out what is the best food for his stock at a cer- 
tain age, in a certain condition, when doing a certain 
thing. But when it comes to the consideration of 
the same subject, when it has to do with his darling 
children and wife, the value of the same never enters 
his cranium. The only thing that can explain this 
lamentable neglect is, that there is more money in 
stock than in children and wife. 

The body is composed of different elements, and 
in certain proportions. Hence it stands to reason 
that the fool should be selected to meet the propor- 
tioned demands of the body. The body contains 
water, fat, albumen, fibrine, lime, sodium, iron, 
potash, and other elements in certain proportions. 
Therefore the food should be selected to meet those 
demands. In other words, the body, as well as the 
whole being of man, demands a balance of supply. 
The body must be fed according to its chemistry, 
and in the proper proportion. 

To meet this demand the body must be fed upon 
meats, vegetables, breads, and fruits, in the proper 
quantities and qualities. 

If too much meat is eaten, the secreting organs 
are overtaxed, and uric poison is the inevitable 
result. 

We believe pork to be generally injurious. It 
is hard to digest, and is not near so healthful as other 
meats. Those who work in the open air can eat 
pork with greater impunity than those who work 
indoors. 

If too much bread or vegetables are eaten the 



The Physical Capacity. 19 

eliminating organs are overtaxed, and an oversup- 
ply of certain elements are imposed upon the system. 
If too much fruit is eaten the whole system becomes 
irritated. We warn on the side of overeating be- 
cause as Americans we eat too much. The result 
is that we have indigestion, constipation, dullness, 
headache, insomnia, and many other ailments. The 
body can not be strong, healthy, and look well when 
it is gorged from morning till night with unneces- 
sary food. If the system is able to assimilate an 
oversupply at all, fatty degeneration is the uncom- 
fortable result. 

In order to keep the digestion in good order, the 
stomach must not be overtaxed in quantity, and 
enough time must be given between meals to digest 
the food before another supply is taken. 

This leads us to speak of the number of times 
we should eat during the day. This question can 
not be dogmatically answered. It depends upon the 
health, digestive powers, kind of work done, and 
how much time is spent in the open air. 

For the physical laborer three meals a day are 
enough. If the indoor or mental worker is careful 
to keep the quantity he eats within his digestive 
powers, he may eat three meals also. Many, how- 
ever, would do better on one or two meals a day. 
Each person must decide by experience for himself. 
He should not eat three meals just because it is the 
fashion. 

Almost any case of constipation may be cured if 
the patient will drink plenty of fresh water regularly, 



20 Man's Harmonious Development. 

eat coarse breads, fresh vegetables, and exercise in 
the open air and sunshine. The practice of using 
laxatives is most injurious indeed. They may help 
for a time, but the longer they are used the weaker 
the system becomes. 

Let it be emphasized here that no part of the 
system can be crutched for any length of time with- 
out weakening that part of the system which leans 
too long upon that crutch. Medicine has its place, 
but its use can only be temporary. Patent medicines 
have done much to ruin health and character. 

The subject of fasting is one of much impor- 
tance. When the system becomes clogged, stupid, 
and overworked, the best way to bring quick and 
lasting relief is to stop eating for a time. It is most 
injurious when the system is in this condition to 
purge it with strong laxatives, and then again fill 
the shocked system before it has had time to regain 
itself. The better way would be to omit a number of 
meals, and then begin to satisfy the body with food 
gradually. 

Drink. 

Water is nature's best and only beverage. Tea, 
coffee, cider, beer, wine, ale, whisky, etc., are mere 
expedients to tickle perverted appetites. Many have 
learned this, and have discontinued the use of any 
beverage except water. Water is heaven's distilla- 
tion for the thirsty palate. The taste and the con- 
dition is abnormal when any other drink than water 
is desired. 



The Physical Capacity. 21 

No greater fallacy is entertained by the people 
of the world, than that they imagine they need a 
stimulating drink of some kind. The only animal 
that is thought worthy of slop besides man is the 
hog. 

The whole fallacy of the stimulant question had 
its origin in ignorance and superstition. It was 
imagined that health, strength, and eternal youth 
might be found in some delicious nectar prepared 
by immortal gods, whose fairy wand waved over 
some far-off spring. But since these fairy stories 
have been exploded time and again, the patent medi- 
cine man, the long-haired Indian doctor, the quack, 
and the patent drugstore still go on deluding and 
robbing the uneducated and the inebriate both of 
their health and money. 

The harmful use resulting from the use of in- 
toxicants especially is taught in almost every school 
in this land, and yet some have the audacity to stand 
up and say that an alcoholic beverage is good for 
the body. Dr. Crothers, of Hartford, Conn., sub- 
mitted a proposition to the effect that alcoholic liq- 
uors were injurious in the mildest form even to one 
thousand physicians, and every one agreed to said 
statement. None dare to say that alcoholic liquor 
is healthful except the brewery and its patron with 
perverted appetites. 

It is known that in those countries where light 
wines and beers are drunk the tendency to drunken- 
ness is increasing rapidly. Physicians and reform- 
ers in Germany, France, and England are now ad- 



22 Man's Harmonious Development. 

vocating very strongly the total disuse of all bever- 
ages having the least possible alcohol in them. 

The use of alcohol in medicine is being rapidly 
displaced by other chemicals less dangerous. Some 
of the best hospitals in the world do not use a drop 
of alcohol in their work. 

It has been tested a number of times that the use 
of alcoholic liquors in the smallest quantities are 
detrimental to the best and largest amount of work. 

Insurance companies now offer two grades of 
policies — one for those who drink no liquors, and 
one for those who drink liquor moderately. And 
in this case, when it comes to dollars and cents, the 
total abstainer gets a cheaper rate. We are quite 
sure the insurance companies understand their busi- 
ness. 

From the standpoint of business, health, peace, 
efficiency, confidence, strength, and every interest, 
the use of alcoholic liquors is now known to be 
decidedly detrimental. 

Water is the only drink that animals and man 
need. It must be pure. Most people do not drink 
enough water. It should be drunk often, and regu- 
larly. It is one of the best agencies to filter the 
system. 

Clothing. 

The clothing should be adapted in texture and 
quantity to the season, health, liabilities to exposure, 
and the climate in which we live. As a general rule, 
cotton should be worn in the summer and wool in 
the winter. Enough clothing should be worn in the 



The: Physical Capacity. 23 

winter months to keep the body warm without rais- 
ing artificial heat to too high a temperature. If this 
is not done when one goes out into the cold, the 
change is so great that cold will be taken, which 
may result in pneumonia or other lung trouble. The 
rule should be, both in winter and in summer, to 
dress in such a way that the body will not suffer 
sudden and great changes of temperature. 

It is certainly filthy, as well as dangerous, to 
allow the dress skirts to mop up the filth and disease 
on the streets and earth, and then smear it over the 
floors or carpets of the home, for the little ones espe- 
cially to be contaminated with. The most sensible 
thing to do, in my judgment at least, would be to 
shorten the skirts. Fashion should not intrude upon 
the best interests of health. 

It is not out of place to say here, that men or 
women should not wear hats, caps, or bonnets in 
public gatherings that will obstruct the view of those 
sitting behind them. An aggravated man was 
moved to write in rhyme : 

" How mad men get, how much do women fret, 
When some big hat they try to dodge, or quite forget. 
O, take it off, and hang it on a hook, 
It 's in my way, I can not even look !" 

Shexter. 

By this we mean the house in which we live. It 

is a mistaken idea prevailing to-day, that in order 

to make a house healthy to live in it must be made 

air tight. The house should be made, of course, so 



24 Man's Harmonious Development. 

that no drafts may be allowed to find their way too 
freely through the living rooms. But one of the 
first things to be considered for the sake of health, 
strength and long life in constructing a house, is to 
make provision for good ventilation. This can be 
done without opening the doors. Transoms should 
be made over every door, and the upper sash of 
every window should be fixed to lower and raise 
easily. 

One of the most serious mistakes nearly all peo- 
ple make relative to the heating of the house, is 
that they heat it too much. The danger of taking 
cold can not be avoided when the temperature of the 
room is high above the temperature outside, and 
when the room is not well ventilated. 

Exercise. 
Every capacity of our being should be developed 
by exercise. We distinguish between work and 
exercise in this, that work as commonly designated 
is either mental or physical efforts put forth to the 
point of fatigue or exhaustion. God never intended 
that man should fatigue or exhaust himself in pro- 
viding for his wants. The trouble is, we take too 
narrow a view of life. We worship like angels, 
but work like brutes. The business of life is to 
build up a balanced manhood and womanhood. To 
do this we declare that all of the capacities should 
receive their proportionate attention. One capacity 
is just as important as another. In fact, each exist 
for the harmonious development of all together. If 



The; Physical Capacity. 25 

this thought is followed, the time and thought given 
to each capacity proportionately would be simple 
exercise. 

This subject comprehends the quintessence of 
these lectures. If the thought of exercise can be 
grasped here, the idea of a balanced life is mastered. 

Every boy and girl sent to school should be care- 
fully examined at times by a competent physician, 
and such exercises prescribed by the gymnasium to 
be taken with the same regularity and care as any 
other recitation. The idea here should be to .correct 
deformity and to build up a symmetrical body, to 
keep the child in perfect health, and teach him how 
to live when he leaves the school. 

Such solicitude for the children, coupled with 
well enforced discipline, such as the prohibition of 
tobacco, liquor, etc., would do much toward building 
up a noble manhood and womanhood. 

No life can be normal without some play. Play 
is letting the imagination and the body have inno- 
cent range without any thought of utility. Play 
helps to glow the delights of varied pleasure. But 
as Shakespeare says: 

<( If all the year were playing holidays, 
To sport would be as tedious as to work." 

SLEEP. 

Sleep is self-imposed rest, and all the rest that 
is needed; that is, if the theory of exercise, as we 
have explained, were observed. 



26 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Sleep should be taken regularly. Late suppers 
or dinners must not be eaten, for they will interfere 
with sound sleep. 

Before retiring the whole system should be re- 
laxed. Nothing exciting should be discussed, or 
allowed to come up if possible. 

Opiates of any kind should never be taken to in- 
duce sleep, unless prescribed by a physician. They 
may help for a short time, but, as we have already 
said, that which takes the place of nature must 
sooner or later fail. 

The practice of drugging babies with soothing 
syrups and laudanums is barbarous, and if persisted 
in the child will become nervous and still more 
wakeful. 

The sleeping room should be well ventilated. A 
window a half inch up at the bottom can not venti- 
late sufficiently. A good, fresh amount of air should 
be circulated by the windows down at the top, and 
the transom open. If the bed-chamber has a foul 
odor in the morning, it is evident that not enough 
fresh air has been admitted. 

Cleanliness. 

That the inner man takes on the character of the 
outer man is obvious. Filthiness is sin gone to seed. 
Plenty of soap and water would be enough evidence 
of a high state of civilization, if we possessed no 
other proof of a people's condition. 

I believe people are civilized in proportion to the 
necessity they feel in putting a bathroom in every 



The Physical Capacity. 27 

house, no matter how small. People who will keep 
the body clean will be very likely to keep the house, 
back yard, barn, office, streets, stores, and churches 
clean. No doubt thousands of diseases might never 
curse humanity if absolute cleanliness was rigidly 
observed in every particular. 

The use of tobacco, liquor, and chewing gum are 
among the worst of filthy practices. Tobacco espe- 
pecially is filthy per se. It befouls the mouth of the 
user, it pollutes his breath, it encrusts the lips 
with sickening amber, it poisons God's pure air, it 
scents the clothing to the extent of trying the pa- 
tience of an angel, it bespatters the virgin earth with 
filth and disease, it worse than wastes the energies 
of the soul, and squanders the bread of the hungry. 

The urgent command of God is, "To lay aside all 
filthiness and superfluity. ,, Christ Himself said, 
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God." This, of course, includes cleanliness of every 
sort — the body as well as the heart. 

Open Air and Sunshine. 

Plenty of fresh air and sunshine are necessary 
to good health and strength. The best of health can 
not be maintained without fresh air and sunshine. 
The remarkable discoveries made with reference to 
the healing powers and preventing powers of an 
abundance of "outdoor" life within the last ten years 
is wonderful. 

A few years ago people imagined that fresh air, 
or exposure to the open air and night air especially, 



28 Max's Harmonious Development. 

were the very things to guard the consumptive or 
debilitated from. Every crack and crevice that could 
let in a bit of God's good air was shut out. The 
patient was kept in the house and smothered like a 
house plant. O, the joy of knowing that God has 
saturated the open air with rosy health, and that it 
is catching too, if we move out into it ! 

"Out ! Out ! Out into the open air," is the cry 
now. Even in the fogs of damp, old England, con- 
sumptive, asthmatic, and all respiratory diseases 
yield favorably to outdoor treatment. 

In many of our best hospitals the outdoor treat- 
ment is used in fevers, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and 
all respiratory troubles with amazingly successful 
results. 

It is now agreed by many of our best experts on 
health questions that night air is just as healthful 
as day air. Some even claim that it is better. The 
reason that people got the idea that night air was 
more inclined to malaria than day air was that, un- 
known to them, the mosquito, which is now known 
to be the cause of that disease, made that his time to 
hie out. It is the mosquito that is the disease, not 
the night air. 

Strong people may be able to stand confinement 
in the poisoned air of the house, but the weak and 
the diseased must get out into the open air and sun- 
shine, or die. 

If every one would go out into the open air every 
day, rain or shine, calm or wind, cold or hot, fair 
weather or storm, colds, catarrh, pneumonia, asthma, 



The: Physical Capacity 29 

constipation, indigestion, and a thousand other 
troubles would soon become matters of history. 

We can not emphasize too strongly the necessity 
of getting out into the open air and sunshine regu- 
larly. To go out into the open air once in a while is 
not enough. It is the lack of exposure that is kill- 
ing thousands every month, not the exposure. 

In his North Pole expedition, neither Nansen nor 
any of his men suffered from colds. The reason 
was that they were compelled to be out in it all the 
time. 

If health would be had, if the cheeks would be 
kept rosy, if the step would be made elastic, if dis- 
ease would be avoided, open air and sunshine must 
be exercised in regularly every day. The regularity 
of outdoor exercise is the thing to be insisted upon. 

How much more healthy, strong, cheerful, and 
useful would the average American woman be, if 
she would walk out into the open air and sunshine 
regularly each day? It would give beauty to her 
complexion, music to her voice, elasticity to her step, 
grace to her movement, vigor to her mind, orginality 
to her conversation, years to her age, and joy to her 
home. 

Self-Control. 

Self-control is an important factor in the main- 
tenance of health and strength. The lack of self- 
control is seen in the indulgence of the glutton, in 
the intemperance of the liquor drinker and tobacco 
user, in the passions of the libertine, in the convul- 



30 Man's Harmonious Development. 

sions of the hysterical, in the rage of the angered, 
and in the red-handed murderer. 

Every appetite and passion should be held as 
servants. They should not be our masters. Self- 
control should enter every detail of our lives. 

Self-control should become the habit of our 
thought and actions. The very kingship of the will 
would react most favorably on the health side of the 
question. We must learn to control ourselves in 
little things. If we omit to do this, we shall fail 
when it comes to great things. Self-control is the 
stride of the giant, but the lack of it is the stumbling 
of the imbecile. 

Sexuality. 

God in His infinite love and wisdom has seen 
fit to perpetuate the human family through the sex 
relation. It is most sacred. The sex relation is one 
of the strongest incentives to virtue and honor in 
the pure, but is the pit of untold sorrow to the igno- 
rant and the depraved. 

On account of the delicacy of the question, it is 
avoided by the virtuous, but woefully perverted by 
the licentious. It is nothing new to say that there 
is too much modesty with reference to a proper 
understanding of this important question. 

The beginning of this education should be the 
home. As long as parents take no thought for their 
children in this matter, just so long will social im- 
purity dog the footsteps of poor humanity. 

The sex mystery is the greatest mystery for the 



The Physical Capacity. 31 

child to solve. He is constantly brought in touch 
with feelings and facts which he is wholly unable 
to solve. He will learn in one way or another about 
some things. If he does not receive any explanation 
from his parents, or any watching, he may fall into 
ruin and shame. We Ho not advocate the theory 
that the child must be made acquainted with the 
nature of the sex problem in its details ; but we do 
say that the child should be so guarded and in- 
formed about those things which have to do with 
his immediate self-interests, that he may be saved 
from the indulgence o? such thoughts or practices 
as will degrade his mind and ruin his health. 

Many children are guilty of self-abuse, and the 
parents are so blinded or they are so careless or igno- 
rant they can not see it, or they will not see it. The 
very things which make a child strong sexed, and 
that are a blessing to him, are the very things that 
may be his ruin if he is not guarded. It is not the 
child's fault. If the child goes wrong it is the fault 
of the parent. 

The child is not to be suspected, but lovingly 
cared for and guarded, and when necessary he 
should be taken aside and kindly counseled with. 

Parents should learn to counsel together as 
friends and kind neighbors relative to the welfare 
of their children, without getting hot-headed and 
fighting mad. Many parents make fools of them- 
selves, and then wonder why their children turn out 
the same way. 

In a general, and often in a specific way, the 



32 Man's Harmonious Development. 

parent should warn the child with reference to his 
relation to other children. 

It is a crime for a man or woman to recite smutty 
or indecent stories before the child. He can not 
understand all about such things, and he will turn 
them over in his mind and distort them to the great- 
est abnormality. The subject of maternity should 
never be discussed before the child. In fact, it is 
out of place to discuss such questions even among 
grown-up folks, as is often done. 

One of the worst things society has to battle 
against with reference to social and self purity, is 
the double standard held between the sexes. Many 
mothers who would not think of letting a lewd 
woman come into their homes, think nothing of let- 
ting their daughters keep company with men whom 
they know to be the worst of libertines, especially 
if he has a handsome estate and can make a dashing 
appearance. "There is no respecter of persons with 
God." Impurity is not matter of sex, but of char- 
acter. What is wrong for the girl is wrong for the 
boy, and vice versa. 

One of the best ways to keep a child from going 
astray, is to give him something to do. A man of 
influence made a personal investigation of ten thou- 
sand fallen women, and asked each one the main 
cause of her shame, and in a large majority of these 
cases the reply was, "I had nothing to do to keep 
my mind off impure thoughts when a girl and young 
lady." 

The subject of social and personal purity should 



The Physical Capacity. 33 

be carefully taught in the home, in the school, in the 
social circle, in the business circles, in the papers, 
and from the rostrum. Every parent should be care- 
ful to exclude from the home such novels and papers 
whose tendency is to corrupt the purity of the child. 
There is almost a criminal amount of laxness in this 
respect. 

The only way to regain lost manhood or woman- 
hood is to be pure, industrious, and clean. Patent 
medicines will never do it. 

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God." 

The Voice. 

What a blessed gift is the faculty of speech! 
How unhappy would men, and especially women, be 
without it ! 

With rhyme, with pleasing conversation, with 
swift delineation, with impassioned declaration, or 
with silvery oratory, man may hold up pictures be- 
fore the soul whose very voice is music, telling of 
love, affection for a darling child, bitter curses for 
an enemy, descriptions of a beautiful flower, the 
mighty paths of infinite space, the sorrows of death, 
the love for native land, or the praise of Him who 
hath made such a blessing possible. 

To a wonderful degree the voice reveals the true 
character. The vulgar have a loud, brawling voice. 
The thief has a sly, halting voice. The cruel has 
a hard, metallic voice. The benevolent has a clear, 
pleasing voice. The honest man has a voice ringing 
clear as a bell. 



34 Man's Harmonious Development. 

The American women have shrill, screechy, high- 
pitched voices. They talk too fast and excitedly. 
The voice should be held in perfect control. It 
should be modulated to a rich, clear, easy tone. 

Nothing is so charming in a woman as a low, 
sweet voice. The French women generally have 
good voices. 'Nothing so repays as the cultivation 
of the voice. A rich, smooth, well modulated voice 
may be acquired by all. The voice should be adapted 
to the thought to be expressed. 

Time should be taken to express ourselves. 
Above all, a high-pitched voice should be subdued. 
It tires and it annoys. 

Nothing will help the voice and the lungs so 
much as to fill the lungs with air several times a 
day, and then expel the air through the lips strongly 
contracted. This is a secret which many are paying 
large sums to learn. Many good speakers and sing- 
ers practice this simple exercise. 

A slovenly, inarticulate enunciation should be 
carefully guarded against. It is due the one whom 
we would have hear us that we speak in tones and 
with such articulation that we may not only be 
understood, but heard with pleasure. 

The Carriage oe the Body. 

The walk, the standing, or the sitting posture 
and every movement of the body tell the character 
of the man or the woman. 

To cultivate a dignified, graceful, manly, and 



The Physical Capacity. 35 

womanly carriage of the body will do much toward 
the cultivation of a like character. 

Very few people walk, sit, stand, or move with 
grace and ease. Many young people even, walk, sit, 
and move about as if they were threescore and ten 
years old. Many assume attitudes which, if it were 
not so common, would seem vulgar. In walking, 
sitting, or standing the body should be held erect. 
This not only adds grace and dignity to the whole 
appearance, but it aids materially the system to per- 
form its functions in a much easier manner. It gives 
the lungs and stomach a better chance to do the 
work imposed upon them. 

Boys and girls just blooming into manhood and 
womanhood are very prone to indulge in a slovenly, 
shifting, reeling movement. When we are young is 
the time to break ourselves of any ungainliness in 
our bodily appearance. All may attain a fair degree 
of grace and ease of bodily movement if they will 
cultivate them with assiduity. 

Everything else being equal, the young man or 
woman who has a graceful movement will command 
a better place and a better salary than one who has 
an ungraceful carriage of the body. 

Straighten up, my boy and girl ! The chances 
are that if you do not acquire the habit of a grace- 
ful carriage of the body while you are young you 
never will. You should not sneak along as if you 
were trying to apologize for your existence. You 
have a right to live, and it is your duty to move 
like a king or a queen. Be one, then move like one. 



36 Man's Harmonious Development. 

We have rapidly gone over those subjects, and 
touched upon those principles which have to do with 
the health, strength, and appearance of the body. 
We began by saying, "The body is the temple of 
the Holy Spirit." No being in this world possesses 
a body so beautiful, expressive, and commanding as 
the human form. The most savage beast is in- 
stinctively afraid of man, especially if he is com- 
pelled to look him in the eyes. He is the only being 
whose spinal column is perpendicular. He stands 
erect. Hence God intended that he should always 
think and act in an erect manner. 

The time is now come when men are beginning 
to think more about the cultivation of the body. No 
teacher, parent, writer, preacher, or nation can af- 
ford to neglect those principles which have to do 
with the health, strength, and appearance of the 
body. 

The mighty men who have commanded the world 
in thought, word, and deed have been men of ex- 
traordinary physical abilities. Moses, David, Solo- 
mon, Socrates, Plato, Columbus, Luther, Cromwell, 
Washington, Jefferson, Webster, Blaine, Lincoln, 
and Gladstone were men of commanding presence. 

All of us can not attain to such high positions 
as these we have just named possibly, but we can to 
a wonderful degree increase our usefulness and in- 
fluence if we cultivate with care and intelligence our 
physical powers. 

In the work of helping the masses to build up 
a strong, healthy body we have many difficulties to 



The Physical Capacity. 37 

encounter. We have the perverted appetites to con- 
tend with. We have the greed for gold to fight 
against. We have the prejudices and ignorance of 
the masses to overcome and educate. We have the 
wary vote-hunter to sidetrack. And we have the 
habits and long-standing practices of past gener- 
ations to reform. Indeed, the work is gigantic. We 
are, however, making marvelous progress. It is 
only within the last few years that the subjects of 
health, the evil effects of narcotic and alcoholic 
poisons, and many hygienic principles have been 
taught in every school in our land. These teachings 
are rapidly spreading over the world. Intelligence 
and will power are the keys which open to the masses 
bodily strength, health, and happiness. In the com- 
posite nature of man the body is the first to be con- 
sidered as a basis for a balanced manhood and 
womanhood. 



LECTURE II. 
THE SOCIAL CAPACITY. 

Man sees a common origin and has a common 
interest in every land and race of people. He is 
God's only true cosmopolitan. Distance, climate, 
language, the color, nor the habits of other races 
bar him from mingling with them in the higher 
duties and privileges of life. 

He meets gigantic obstacles, it is true; but his 
social nature is stronger than any and every diffi- 
culty. 

What matters it that Cicero was a Roman ? That 
Demosthenes was a Greek? That Dante was an 
Italian ? That David was a Hebrew ? That Shake- 
speare was an Englishman? That Lincoln was an 
American? That Hugo was a Frenchman? Ah, 
they were more than that ! They were men ! World 
men ! They are our brothers ! 

Man's social nature is so communicative that he 
goes beyond the circle of the human family, and 
takes a delight in the associations of those animals 
that are docile and intelligent, and in — 

" The love of nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms." 

38 



The Social Capacity. 39 

What history, what art, what literature, what 
love, what hate, what peace, what war, what heaven, 
what hell has grown out of the fact that man is a 
social being ! 

With this capacity are associated the love of 
home, men, native land, and Heaven. And as man 
rises in the scale of intelligence, the social capacity 
becomes more and more inclusive. The ignorant 
and the circumscribed man knows but little about 
humanity. He believes other races or nations are 
enemies to him and his. The more he becomes edu- 
cated and Christianized, the more he sees his inter- 
ests are their interests, and their interests are his in- 
terests. He soon learns that harm comes to the 
great social order by men seeking to gratify the 
lower capacities to the exclusion of the higher. 

In studying man as a social being, we study one 
of the greatest questions with which man has to 
do. Here we find law, history, poetry, fiction, ora- 
tory, music, art, language, politics, education, ethics. 

In discussing man as a social being, we shall 
take up in the following order these subjects: The 
Home, The Married Relation, The Public Schools, 
Friendship, Business Relation, The Church as a 
Social Factor, The State, and Man as a World 
Being. 

The Homk. 

The sweetest words that can be uttered by mortal 
lips, and which make the heart sing with music, 
are : Jesus, Mother, Home. 



40 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Mrs. Opie has beautifully said: 

" Give me my home, to quiet dear, 

Where hours untold and peaceful move ; 
So fate ordain I some time there 
May hear the voice of him I love." 

The home was the first institution God set up 
among men. Here the social instincts of man find 
expression and contentment, delightful and sacred 
beyond description. The poet Young has well said : 

" The first sure symptom of a mind in health, 
Is rest of heart, and pleasures felt at home." 

Men and women, the world over, find the sweet- 
est joys, the most lasting satisfactions, the truest 
interpretations of the soul, in the home life. 

No matter how much misery and infelicity men 
and women have seen in other homes, they expect- 
antly look forward to the happy time when they 
may establish their own home, which shall be the 
happiest of all homes. The pain of leaving home ! 
The joy of making one ! What strange and contra- 
dicting mixture of feelings ! 

From babyhood to manhood and womanhood we 
recall the hallowed memories of home. How father 
and mother toiled, sacrificed, and suffered! How 
we waited and followed! How success came, and 
how reverses came ! How like the blossoms of the 
springtime little brother or sister came into the 
home, and how like the fading rose they drooped 
and died after shedding their beauty and fragrance 
for only a little time! 



The Social Capacity. 41 

How joy filled our happy hearts with bubbling 
glee, and how sorrow with cruel wings chased away 
the gladness from our throbbing breasts. 

But sorrows, reverses, disappointments, sickness, 
pain, and death truly bound us who remained closer 
together. 

Such memories ! Such hopes ! Home, Sweet 
Home ! is the sweetest and dearest thought we can 
know. No wonder the people love to sing with the 
poet Payne : 

" Mid pleasures and palaces tho' we may roam, 
Be it ever so humble, there 's no place like home ! 
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, 
Which seek thro' the world, is not met with elsewhere. 

An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain, 
O give me my lowly thatched cottage again. 
The birds singing gayly that came at my call, 
Give me these and peace of mind dearer than all. 

To us who in despite of the absence of years, 
How sweet the remembrance of home still appears. 
From allurements abroad which but natter the eye, 
The unsatisfied heart turns and says with a sigh — : 

Home, Home, Sweet, Sweet Home ! 

There 's no place like Home." 

Never forget the old home! And, above all, 
never forget father and mother ! Ah, that dear old 
home ! How vivid are its scenes now before me ! 
There is the old house, the big elm-tree under whose 
shades mother so often sat and told us about love 
and life; and there is the well and the garden. 
Blessed memories ! Some of the old landmarks are 
gone, and some of the dear ones are gone ; but some- 



42 Man's Harmonious Development. 

how when my heart reverts to the old home it is 
made tenderer and truer. 

How often people thoughtlessly remark as they 
point out a beautiful residence, "What a beautiful 
home !" A house is not a home. It may be beau- 
tiful without, but a prison within. 

A Home is a place — no matter whether it be in 
the frozen North or in the sunny South, in the palace 
of the rich or the cottage of the poor — where two or 
more loved ones live and try to make each other 
happy. 

If the young husband has no home of his own, 
let him begin at once to buy one. Do not wait until 
you are able to buy a fine one, for the chances are 
that you will never be able to buy one. Buy a cozy 
little place, and improve it. Make it beautiful with- 
out and within. Put here a touch and there a touch, 
until the house, the lawn, and everything about it 
will reflect your very thought and life. Our happi- 
ness is reflected more than we sometimes imagine. 

But in building the house and making every- 
thing beautiful and comfortable, be sure that you 
root not your affections in these, the means, but let 
your love go out to those for whom these things 
were prepared. Many a house and lawn, beautiful 
without and within, were made so to gratify a selfish 
soul. 

The Married Relation. 

When a man and woman assume the marriage re- 
lation, they take upon themselves the most exalted 
and delicate of all responsibilities. 



The: Social Capacity. 43 

A male may be a king, but not a man. The 
being who is truly a husband is a man royal. And 
the woman who gently and helpfully fulfills her 
place as a wife reigns Queen of queens. No place, 
no honor, no other state in life is so sacred, worthy, 
and angelic in the eyes of God and all good men, as 
that called Wife, Mother. Men and women in the 
exigencies of struggling for a material existence 
may forget for a time the spheres for which they 
were created as social beings; but if they be true 
men and women their holiest and most reverent 
affections will instinctively go out to the climax of 
all social privileges — the establishment of the home. 
As the moon reflects the glory of the sun, so all 
social joys and blessings are but the faint glimmer- 
ings of the glory of the Home. 

Fools, the incapacious, and the degenerate may 
sneer at the home, the faithfulness of husbandhood, 
and the sacredness of motherhood; but let such 
know, if they have ability to know, that if it had not 
been that some sane and normal beings sought the 
perfume and joys of social life and destiny, their 
worthless existence would never have been a possi- 
bility. 

Monogamy. 

God in the beginning ordained that Adam should 
have but one Eve, and that Eve should have but 
one Adam. The origin of polygamy did not arise 
because of any necessity, or command of God. The 
very instincts of our nature cry out against it. The 
very thought of polygamy has its origin in licentious 



44 Man's Harmonious Development. 

abnormality. It can continue only where there is 
profound ignorance and sin, and where it is de- 
fended by men ambitious for power and lust. 

Any other doctrine argues against the equality 
of the sexes. It makes God a respecter of persons. 
It makes sex the argument of life, instead of char- 
acter. Husband and wife are to be helpmeets, 
equals, complements one for the other. This union 
makes possible the symmetrical life. Indeed, the 
highest and the truest, and the most balanced man- 
hood and womanhood, can not be attained without 
the marriage relation. But the very idea of bigamy 
or polygamy must destroy the very object for which 
the marriage relation was ordained; namely, purity, 
equality, and companionship. 

Polygamy is non-Christian and non-American. 
It is foreign, ancient, beastly. 

The frequent divorce suits brought into our 
courts is a dishonor to our Nation. The marriage 
relation is not a product of legislative enactment, 
neither has it its beginning in human government. 
It is God's intitution. He made it, and under no 
circumstances has man a right to "put it asunder," 
only as he does it according to God's instructions. 
The Government should protect the marriage relation 
in its pristine purity. The marriage relation is not 
simply a civil contract, which may be broken at the 
weak and impulsive will of husband or wife. Mar- 
riage is life for life, through life. And as this Nation 
is a Christian Nation, the teachings of Christ relative 
to divorce should be the law. In fact, if the teach- 



The Social Capacity. 45 

ing of Christ in this respect were enforced as the 
law of the land, there would be fewer necessities 
for divorce. Men and women would be more care- 
ful in their matrimonial engagements. Fathers and 
mothers would guard with greater care their 
thoughtless daughters. And the marriage relation 
would be lifted above the goveling thought of mar- 
riage as a civil contract to a divine institution, whose 
establishment must be permanent. 

When once the bonds of matrimony have been 
sealed, beginning in the engagement and completed 
in the marriage, faithful and loving fidelity should 
characterize every thought, word, and deed. The 
man or woman who is not true before marriage, will 
never be true after marriage. 

The girl who quarrels with her mother will 
quarrel with her husband when she marries. A boy 
who is mean to his mother, will be mean to his wife 
when he marries. 

"But ye not unequally yoked together/' is the 
voice of God, and sad experience. It is a shame and 
a crime for a good-for-nothing, lazy, intemperate 
man to marry a woman who is pure, ambitious, re- 
ligious, and then drag her down to his filthy and de- 
generate level. 

Each should try to realize the noble aspirations 
of the other, so far at least as appreciation and help. 

There is a strong tendency in our present-day 
civilization to crowd, irritate, confuse, and unsettle 
the very happiest home life. Life is too complex. 
The demands are abnormally great. We should not 



46 Man's Harmonious Development. 

only emphasize the "simple life," but we should call 
attention to the "balanced life." 

The straining condition of our present-day civil- 
ization is brought about by the rapid development 
of our Nation and the craze for wealth. It will pass 
away with a better understanding of things and an 
older civilization. 

It is a noted fact, that the ratio of marriages are 
becoming smaller each year. The cause of this mis- 
fortune, and in a strong sense a calamity, is that 
young men are deterred from marrying because nine 
women out of ten want to start in housekeeping just 
a little ahead of where her mother is leaving off. 

And in many cases a home is never realized be- 
cause economy is not practiced. Thus we have 
moving, worry, fear, dread, lack of dignity, no sense 
of home, shifting, and general discontentment. 
Every man should have a home of his own and a 
business of his own. It is due to himself, and it is 
due to his family. It may do to work on a salary 
for a time, but it is slavery to keep it up all through 
life. Own your own home and be your own master ! 

The social life between husband and wife is the 
true beginning of that larger social life that finds 
its way out into all the relations which can exist 
among men. The social life of the home, the neigh- 
borhood, Church, and State has its origin in the 
social life between husband and wife. Here is the 
starting-point for all future history. 

The husband and wife need not be similar in 
every taste and aspiration in order to be most com- 



The: Social Capacity. 47 

panionable. In fact, if they are well balanced and 
aspire at all, and try to help each other, it is well 
that they are not alike. Husband and wife usually 
admire each other for their dissimilarities, rather 
than their similarities. 

In order that the marriage relation shall be the 
sweetest and the noblest, husband and wife must 
labor together not only in the home, but in every 
work of life which has for its aim the regeneration 
and the uplifting of society. 

Husbands and wives are seen too little together 
in society. This mingling together in society, and 
the work of uplifting humanity brings with it that 
fine and broadening development which can not be 
gained in any other way. 

How beautiful and helpful it would be if hus- 
band and wife would often walk out into the fields, 
or along the quiet, sparkling stream, or out beneath 
the silent stars, when all was still save the music of 
their own voices. 

Here nature would take a hand in the coalescence 
of loving hearts. She would throw her mantle of 
beauty and romance, like the hovering wings of 
blessing angels, over this divine union of destiny. 
The home, with its methods of entertainment and 
work, would be left behind, and these two lovers 
would be thrown upon each other's care for thought 
and expression. This would break the monotony. 
This association of husband and wife would quicken 
new life and new inspiration, and prevent that cold- 
ness which often creeps into the routine home life. 



4$ Man's Harmonious Development. 

The husband and wife must understand the ob- 
ject of life, and each labor for its realization. If 
they do not, they are like frail ships pushing out 
on the ocean of life with no chart, no compass, and 
no captain in command. 

The ocean of life is big, its storms are fierce, its 
waves rise mountain high, its shoals are treacherous, 
its nights are gloomy and dark, its toils are heavy 
and sore, and they who venture upon it without hav- 
ing with them Him, who alone can say, "Peace, be 
still," must sooner or later flounder in the waves of 
despair and ruin. 

Very often the religion of Jesus Christ, which 
was given as a means to an end, is slandered and 
ridiculed because, when applied to the spiritual life 
alone, did not bring the desired happiness. The re- 
ligion of Jesus Christ must touch every capacity of 
our being before we can claim it has had a fair test 
even. The social life must be cultivated. The little 
walks together, the lecture, the social circle, Church 
services, travel, visits, planning together, the ex- 
changing of sympathies, and the conscious union of 
efforts to reach the highest and the best in life, will 
fill to overflowing the cup of joy between husband 
and wife. 

The poet Pope beautifully writes : 

" O happy state ! when souls each other draw, 
When love is liberty, and nature law; 
All then is full, possessing and possessed, 
No craving void left aching in the breast ; 
Even thought meets thought, ere from the lips it parts, 
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart." 



The Social Capacity. 49 

Children in the Home. 

If children come to the home, so much more is 
the home a home. Cicero, that brilliant Roman sen- 
ator, said: "What gift has Providence bestowed on 
man, that is so dear to him as his children?" 

The poet Byron has aptly said : 

"Talk not of pain! 
The childless cherubs well might envy thee 
The pleasures of a parent ! Bless him ! 
As yet he knows no words to thank, but 
His heart will, and thine own too." 

The home can be said to be a family now. Noth- 
ing is so sacred, beautiful, and full of dignity, as 
when father and mother are surrounded by their 
children, loving and being loved! Ah, well might 
angels envy such ! 

The training of the child should begin with its 
first ability to respond. Begin just where the child 
is, and go on up toward an ideal manhood and 
womanhood. So many children are ruined by fool- 
ish parents. 

They teach, or allow the child to do, that which 
in a few years they will punish him for doing. And 
often the child is taught or allowed to do or say 
wrong things, because it is imagined to be "cute." 
They seem to forget that which the child learns 
at its earliest period will be the hardest to throw off 
in after years. Childhood was given, and is pro- 
longed over a long period, for the sole purpose of 
training. 
4 



50 Man's Harmonious Development. 

More people have a better understanding of the 
nature and importance of early training in the ani- 
mal world, than they do in the human world. 

Both father and mother should care for the 
training and education of the child. It is cruel for 
one parent to throw the care of the child upon the 
care of the other entirely. And it is tyrannical for 
one parent to usurp the entire government of the 
child. The government of the child must be. mu- 
tually agreed upon. 

No matter how much father and mother may 
differ relative to the government of the child, their 
difference should never be made known before the 
child. Nothing so demoralizes the child than that 
he knows that father and mother are not agreed on 
his government. 

Obedience is the first, and one of the greatest, 
lessons the child can be taught. It makes the child 
master of himself. It gives him power to command 
others when the time and place come to exert that 
power. Obedience is the one quality which, if en- 
forced rightly, will make the boy a man indeed, or 
the girl a woman indeed. Obedient children will 
be obedient to the Church and State when they be- 
come men and women. It has been found that chil- 
dren who were taught strict and just obedience by 
their parents never become criminals and outlaws 
and disturbers of the peace. 

The child should be taught reverence for his 
elders, for his teachers, for his superiors, and all 
things sacred. Too many children to-day are reck- 



The Social Capacity. 51 

less, brawly, irreverent, and impudent. This is no 
fault of the children. It is the fault of the parents. 
Let them set a high ideal before the child, work 
for it themselves, and see to it that the child does too. 

Fathers and mothers should be companions for 
the child. They should be so near the child, and 
on such terms with the child, that he will come to 
them first in his joys and first in his troubles. What 
a pity it is that father or mother should ever get out 
of range and sympathy of son or daughter! 

The same standard should be held for both boys 
and girls. What is wrong for the sister is wrong 
for the brother, and what is wrong for the brother 
is wrong for the sister. 

The boy needs as much care as the girl. Perhaps 
more, because of the double standard now tolerated. 
What matters it if the boy is wild and reckless ; he 
is only a boy ! What matters it if the boy does run 
out late of nights and drink and carouse ; he is only 
a boy! 

But in the evolution of the boy, on up to the 
husband and father, can he go down and not drag 
with him his wife and children? 

Does not the standard set for one sex affect the 
other sex also ? 

What has sex to do with virtue, cleanliness, hon- 
esty, decency? 

The boy should be kept just as sweet and clean 
as the girl. He should be looked after just as care- 
fully and kept just as nice as the girl, not because 
he is a boy, but because he is a human being. If 



52 Man's Harmonious Development. 

the girl is expected to be a lady, the boy should be 
expected to be a gentleman. Some day they may 
have to live together, and what a pity it is for a lady 
to be compelled to live with a brute ! 

It is not the fault of the boy if he thus grows up 
to be unworthy. It is the fault of the parents. 

The boy should be kept in school just as long 
as the girl, if not longer. His room should be kept 
just as nice and clean. 

How thoughtless and foolish the expression, 
"O, anything is good enough for the boy!" Boys 
see this indifference and this real lack of respect 
for them, and many times ponder it seriously in their 
hearts. 

The Public School. 

The public school is the next important factor in 
fitting" the child for his place in the world. And as 
the teachers are a picked and trained class, selected 
from the best homes in the country, they can, to a 
great measure, correct any neglect or bad teaching 
on the part of unqualified parents. The glory of 
our country is not our great statesmen, but our 
public-school teachers. 

The logical demand of the State, especially in a 
Republic like our own glorious country, where her 
success and destiny is hanging upon the uniform 
training and intelligence of her citizens, is to see to 
it that the children within her bounds receive their 
common-school education at her hands. The social 
nature of man argues that the children should be 



The: Social Capacity. 53 

educated together, in order that they may be the 
better prepared to live together. 

The morality of the children will be better where 
they are educated together, than if they were edu- 
cated separately. The child needs social discipline, 
and nowhere could a better place be found than in 
the public schools. 

Then, from a standpoint of scholarship, the child 
educated in a public school will be educated better 
than if he were educated in a private school or in 
the home. Many educators, including President 
Eliot, of Harvard College, have declared that chil- 
dren receiving their early training and education at 
the hands of the public schools, are better prepared 
to enter advanced study than those receiving their 
education at the hands of a private school or in the 
home. 

The public school, without question, is the most 
potent factor as a social leveler in our Nation. Here 
the child meets on a common level with his fellows. 
He soon learns, no matter how much he has been 
petted and spoiled at home, that he is no better than 
the rest. He learns that all have equal rights. The 
child quickly learns that if he is entitled to any more 
honor or consideration than another, it must be by 
hard work and character. Here he learns to mark 
his place in the social balance, which is the glory 
of our democracy. He quickly learns that brass 
buttons, titles, riches, second-hand honor, and claim 
to prestige is a makeshift for that true respect 
and honor which can only be received by those who 



54 Man's Harmonious Development. 

toil and are worthy. In the school the child's man- 
ner, expression, disposition, actions, and character 
are open to every other child. If there is any flaw 
every boy and girl in the whole school will know it, 
and will treat him accordingly. And whether he 
would or not, if he has any pride or sense, he is soon 
whipped into the line of our glorious American de- 
mocracy. 

The Jew, Italian, German, Swede, French, Irish, 
Turk, or Chinaman may come among us, raw from 
his native land, but if his children are put into the 
hopper of the public school with the turn of a few 
years he comes forth a perfect American. Long 
live the public schools ! But palsied be the hand put 
forth to destroy our great American public school! 

Friendship. 

To see a woman lead about and caress a poodle 
dog is evidence that she loves company, although 
we can not admire the choice she makes. We have 
always believed that people love that which they are 
most like. Man in a normal state loves to associate 
with his fellows. Here poetry, art, history, country, 
home, heaven — all have full interpretation and ex- 
pression. 

Man's happiness is not absolute and alone, but 
is relative and social. Man is not a man when alone. 
Manhod is derived, and can have no meaning only 
as we associate him with men. Man, like the plan- 
ets, has his place in lieu of the position of those sur- 
rounding him. And, like a. lost planet, he becomes 



The Social Capacity. 55 

an enemy to himself and to his fellows, if he by word 
or deed cuts the cord of social reciprocity. 
Joseph Miller says : 

" God pity those who know not touch of hands — 
Who dwell from all their fellows far apart, 
Who, isolated in unpeopled lands, 

Know not a friend's communion, heart to heart ! 

But pity these — ah, pity these the more, 
Who of the populous town a desert make, 

Pent in a solitude upon whose shore 

The tides of sweet compassion never break !" 

What joys are comparable to the joys of friend- 
ship? 

How beautiful, and typical of heaven itself, is 
the friendship of David and Jonathan ! How sweet 
and impressive is the love between Ruth and Naomi ! 
The mutual love and friendship between Damon 
and Pythias touches a cord of sympathy even in 
the cruel heart of the King of Syracuse, who begs 
permission to be admitted into their friendship. 

Cicero's essay on "friendship" is an excellent 
tribute to the social nature of man. In one place he 
says : "Among all the joys for which I am indebted, 
either to nature or to fortune, there is not one upon 
which I set so high a value as that of friendship." 
Shakespeare says : 

"I count myself in nothing else so happy, 
As in a soul remembering my good friends." 

Nothing to my mind is so worthy of cultivation 
as our social natures. In the rush and hurry of this 



56 Man's Harmonious Development. 

strenuous age we sadly neglect the cultivation of 
our social capacities. 

How cruel it is to betray friendship ! The cross 
on Calvary will ever stand as a warning to traitor- 
ism and betrayed friendship. No name is half so 
contemptible as the name of Judas. 

Friendship has been betrayed so often that many 
good men, and more especially those who have felt 
the stab of Brutus, have lost all confidence in all 
men. How pitiful such a condition ! Recall my be- 
trayed friend, there are, as with Christ, eleven faith- 
ful ones left. 

Why should it be thought abnormal when we 
receive a favor from another unsolicited? Some 
men are afraid to extend help, and others are afraid 
to accept help. 

Many men and women carry sorrows, troubles, 
and anxieties, which would be greatly lightened if 
they could confide with some true, sympathetic soul. 

We do not advocate the idea of loading other 
people down with our own sorrows and troubles; 
but we do say in many cases it is our duty to "bear 
one another's burdens." As we share each other's 
joys, so we should share each other's sorrows. It 
lightens wonderfully the one carrying the burden or 
sorrow, and does not burden much the one to whom 
it is conveyed. 

Ah, if the Spirit of Christ might pervade the 
hearts of all ! He said : "Come unto Me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 

True, men and women experience as much pain 



The Social Capacity. 57 

when denied the social blessings of life as when de- 
nied the physical. Banishment is worse than star- 
vation. 

The social capacity has its beginning and beauty 
in the home; it brings the sexes together in the 
charming circles of society ; it throws a halo of mys- 
tery and interest over every social gathering; it 
gives the commercial relations of men life and soul ; 
it is the source of all patriotism; it sends the mis- 
sionary across the sea to save lost men; it sends 
forth lovers as husbands and wives to build up 
"Home, Sweet Home;" it sheds tears of sorrow at 
the grave, where the flowers of affection, not their 
fragrance and beauty, are buried beneath the sight 
of weeping eyes, and sends the mourner home to 
love and wait. 

Meet all with a hearty good cheer. Wish every- 
body the best possible, and help them gain it. Be 
courteous, gentle, kind, benevolent, forgiving. Ap- 
peal to the highest in men. Encourage the discour- 
aged. Help heal the brokenhearted. Learn to adapt 
yourself to all men. Never wait to see what people 
may say or do to you. You act first in a gracious 
manner, and they will return the compliment with 
compound interest. 

Ah, beautiful and divine is friendship! 

The: Social Relation in the Business World. 
In the commercial relations of men we find a 
most excellent opportunity for the development of 
the social capacity. 



58 Man's Harmonious Development. 

The body must be clothed, fed, and sheltered. 
These must receive extra attention aside from their 
naked utilities. They must be prepared with skill 
and beauty. Every quarter of the habitable globe 
must be searched for articles of necessity and luxury. 
Dwellings must be built and tastefully furnished. 
Transportation of men, mail, express, and ponder- 
ous freight must be dispatched to every recess of 
the earth with safety and celerity. Books must be 
published, lectures delivered, sermons preached, ora- 
tions uttered, hospitals maintained, colleges sup- 
ported, and governments sustained. 

The enumerations of these things are but a frac- 
tion of the multitude of the varied work of human- 
ity, which of necessity bring the world into close 
social relation. 

No matter what men may do for a livelihood, 
just so that they contribute something which is 
worthy, helpful, and a blessing, countless diversity 
is a blessing. Each may have different gifts, but 
all should have the same spirit. 

How selfish and diabolical it is for men and 
women to engage in a so-called business which they 
know does not confer a blessing upon humanity, 
but which they know is a curse ! 

God places no aristocracy upon this or that 
method of contributing to the necessities of the 
world. If there is any more honor in one business 
than in another business, it must be because this or 
that business confers greater blessings and requires 
greater preparations than some other calling or busi- 
ness. After all, "We are laborers together." 



The; Social Capacity. 59 

From the very nature of our different abilities, 
capital and labor both are required. Capital and 
labor, like the piano and the piano player, are but 
means to an end — music! And the music will be 
sweet and lasting in proportion to the harmony that 
can be maintained between the piano and the piano 
player. 

Let the man advancing the capital know that his 
means is but labor in another form. And let the 
man laboring know that his work is but capital in 
another form. And let us all remember that the 
man is greater than the capital. The capital is a 
means. The man is an end. 

Both must work together, and each must supple- 
ment the other. 

It is not the amount of capital which the em- 
ployer possesses that irritates the laboring man. But 
it is that some employers refuse to pay sufficient 
wages that will allow the laborer to average his sta- 
tion among men. The difference between the rich 
man's luxuries and the scarcity of the poor man's 
necessities is the knife which cuts the poor man's 
heart. 

The great intelligent masses to-day are not de- 
manding favors. They are crying for justice;. In 
these days of freedom, intelligence, and the leaven- 
ing influences of Christianity men refuse to bow 
down to brass-buttoned aristocracy, titles never 
earned, and to diamond strutters on Wall Street, 
but will tip their hats any day to true worth. We 
are Americans ! 

Among some of the most needed reforms to-day, 



60 Man's Harmonious Development. 

so far as capital and labor are concerned, are: The 
abolition of child labor, just and quick arbitration 
between employer and employee, better and cheaper 
tenement-houses, Sabbath rest, weekly payments, 
the annihilation of the grog-shop, better wages in 
many cases, better sanitary provisions, the recog- 
nition of the brotherhood of all men, and shorter 
working hours. I put this last, as I conceive this 
question demands some argument. How T in the 
name of common sense can any man be a man, and 
put all of his time in digging for bread, cheap cloth, 
and shelter? If man is an animal, well and good, 
except that he would better not pretend to be a 
man when he is not. Eight hours at the most is 
enough for any man to spend each day to provide 
for his body. He has a social, an intellectual, a 
moral, and a spiritual nature to care for. It takes 
time for these, as well as for the animal part. 

There is marked improvement going on. Men 
receive better wages, capital is bringing better re- 
turns, men work less hours, capital is doing more 
work, men are recognized more and more as 
brothers, and capital is respected more than ever. 
The Social Capacity is becoming more and more 
recognized. 

The Church as a Social Factor. 

The Church has a unique and important mission 
in helping to develop man's Social Capacity. It is 
because that man is a social being that the Church 
is a necessity, and even a possibility. 

The social nature of men is strong generally. 



The Social Capacity. 6i 

Men can understand the social relations among 
themselves, but are not so quick to recognize the 
Invisible, or God. Let the Church emphasize the 
social side of man's nature, and from that lead him 
up to a higher communion. Some people in the 
Church seem to imagine that if they attempt to culti- 
vate the social side of man's nature they either mini- 
mize the work of man's spiritual nature, or that they 
are patronizing or stooping. Such a view, however, 
is founded upon a false notion or conception of the 
social capacity altogether. This capacity is worthy 
and full of dignity. Christ Himself honored it all 
through His ministry. The Pharisees hated Him 
because He did bring the Church to men, and all 
men to the Church. When the Church neglects the 
social capacity she fails in her full mission. 

The question is often asked, ''Why are our 
churches not better filled?" When we see how 
strong the social nature of man is, and then recall 
how little there is done for it by the Churches, we 
may not wonder that there are no more attending. 
This is not the only reason, of course. But it is one 
of the good reasons why more people do not attend 
Church. 

The average Church does scarcely nothing for 
the social nature of her members and attendants. 
This is an important question if we go no further 
than the social side of the subject ; but when we 
consider that the Church is a means to an end, the 
subject is a serious one. The Church can not expect 
to bring men to God whom she has not reached 
herself. 



62 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Strangers must be sought out. Each member 
must take an interest in every other member. The 
Church is a family. 

Every good, clean, sensible effort should be made 
to bring the members and friends of the Church to- 
gether socially. Such a course, too, would help to 
break down social hedges, cliques, prejudices, and 
little, vexing animosities. 

The Church is one of the best social levelers. It 
brings all classes, conditions, races, dispositions to- 
gether. They take one common name and aim. 
They are taught to pray, "Our Father which art 
in heaven." Here they learn they are brothers and 
sisters. Their collective sympathies, aspirations, 
and devotions are together lifted up with one com- 
mon voice. 

• The Church should take a real interest in men. 
She should show the world the grandest brother and 
sisterhood known to men. She does, but there is 
great room for improvement. 

The Church must have the society of the people, 
and the people must have the society of the Church. 
The Church must take the initiative. The spiritual 
and the social capacities are the right and left hands 
of the Church. One without the other leaves her a 
cripple. When the Church learns to use both hands 
equally alike and with great proficiency, she may 
truly sing : 

" Blest be the tie that binds 

Our hearts in Christian love ; 
The fellowship of kindred minds 
Is like to that above." 



The: Social Capacity. 63 

The: State: as a Social Institution. 

As man is a social being, possessing many rights 
which have, are, and perhaps always will be in- 
fringed upon, he is compelled to organize in the 
form of government for self-protection. An ideal 
people are those who are able to govern themselves 
through their representatives. An ideal government 
is one which allows her people to govern them- 
selves. Such a government is, as Lincoln said, "Of 
the people, by the people, and for the people." A 
kingdom or a monarchy, ,in their very nature, de- 
clare men to be unequal. 

One reason why the United States produces so 
many ideal people, is because she is an ideal govern- 
ment. She is the grandest, freest, most reasonable, 
the most helpful, and inspiring government on the 
face of the earth. «r 

We have not reached perfection. That, however, 
is our goal. We understand that we must advance. 
That progress must be our watchword. 

Laws must be made and rigidly enforced to meet 
every right and condition that will further the high- 
est development of an ideal manhood and woman- 
hood. 

Legislation should not cease, but great, long- 
strides should be made in law enforcement. The 
enforcement of the law lies with the people. They 
elect the officers and have the right to make such 
complaints and such petitions as are in keeping with 
the laws and with a free people. 

Liberty in America does not mean license. No 



64 Man's Harmonious Development. 

man is at liberty to do that which will injure himself 
as a citizen, or that which will infringe upon the 
sacred rights of others. 

The great need of our people to-day is, so far as 
good government is concerned, for all who wish for 
the very best government to stand together. There 
is no reason why honesty and benevolence can not 
stand together as well as dishonesty and cruelty. 
Our country is asking for leaders, true, honest, pure, 
unselfish, and qualified, as never before in her great 
history. 

The rule of the grafter, the professional poli- 
tician, party boss, time-server, plutocrat, the liber- 
tine, and the brewer has held sway long enough. 
They are confined to no political party particularly. 
We need more men like Washington, Lincoln, Sum- 
ner, an d^ Garfield. 

So many men have very narrow notions of pa- 
triotism. They imagine that to be patriotic they 
must hate a foreign enemy. They seem never to 
realize the possibility of a nation decaying from 
within. How delusive ! All history teaches us that 
the great nations of antiquity have gone down 
hacked to death by her own swords of dishonesty, 
impurity, intemperance, and rebellion against the 
God of heaven and earth. 

In our Nation the sacred ballot is the scepter of 
power. He who refuses or neglects to use this 
power to the highest interests of the largest num- 
bers, as he understands it, is a traitor of the worst 
type. He is not entitled to the honored name, an 



The Social Capacity. 65 

American. No matter how corrupt a nation may 
become, that excuses no man from exercising his 
franchise. The more degraded a nation may be- 
come, the more it behooves good men to attend the 
primaries, to use their voices and influence for better 
things, and .to cast a ballot which really stands for 
the highest and the most advanced government. 

Parties political should be held simply as a means 
to an end. Some hold to a party like they would an 
old friend, and seek to elevate him to the highest 
honor of the nation long after he has lost his char- 
acter. The danger is that, as political parties be- 
come successful, they are seized by selfish and de- 
signing men to further their own interests. To 
remedy this, men must be ready and quick to leave 
their party and vote for another candidate or an- 
other party when this becomes evident. The man 
who boasts that he has never scratched his ticket has 
made a simpleton of himself and betrayed his 
country. 

Sex should not bar women from the right to 
vote. It is an unjust tyranny. We do not defend 
our Nation by the sword, but by brains and char- 
acter. The greatest opposers to granting women 
the right to vote in all elections, are those who op- 
pose all far-reaching reforms. They know that the 
majority of the women will stand by the home, the 
Church, the helpless, cleanliness, decency, and mo- 
rality. 

Our Nation is an ideal nation. Hence only ideal 
men should be elected to serve her. Any party who 
5 



66 Man's Harmonious Development. 

dares to nominate a man who is a tipler, impure, or 
who in the least manner violates any law wittingly, 
should be scratched at the ballot-box. This would 
teach presumptuous party bosses better sense. 

In principle and practice the ethics of the nation 
must be of the highest. She must set a good ex- 
ample for her citizens. What is wrong for an indi- 
vidual to do, is wrong for the nation to do. She 
has no right to condemn an evil with one hand, and 
then license it with the other. She has no right to 
grant certain laws of a State to be constitutional, 
and then turn right round and be the first one to 
help break that law down. The subterfuges of so- 
called "interstate commerce" should not be allowed 
to set aside any law declared to be constitutional. 

The political consciences of men are being awak- 
ened. The American people are beginning to feel 
the great responsibility of bad, unjust, intemperate, 
cruel, and defiant government. The power they 
now see lies with the voter. Men are beginning to 
take notice of the pale, bony, pleading hands of 
helpless children and defenseless women, multitude 
for number, raised in the name of high heaven for 
justice, and sacred, human rights. 

Everywhere the cry is, "Better laws, better gov- 
ernment, better officers, and better law enforce- 
ment." We must have them. 

Man as a World Being. 
Man is a world being. The river of humanity 
flows swiftly, mightily, and victoriously on and on 



The Social Capacity. 67 

to the great brotherhood of man and the Father- 
hood of God. He may hate some race peculiarities, 
but we can not help but love Humanity. Many hate 
the Jew, but they love Moses, David, and Paul. 
Some hate the Russians, but love Tolstoi and Gorky. 
Some hate the Italian, but they love Columbus, Sa- 
vonarola, and Dante. Some hate the English, but 
they love Shakespeare, Scott, Tennyson, and Glad- 
stone. Some may not like the Americans very well, 
but they love Washington, Lincoln, Garfield, Long- 
fellow, Willard, and Beecher. After all, it is not the 
race part we hate. It is that we do not like some 
of their ways, and they do not like ours. But we 
love Humanity. Moses, David, Paul, Socrates, 
Plato, Dante, Hugo, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Doug- 
lass belong to no race. They are world men. 

To-day men are taking on world thoughts. The 
little, gossiping, trivial, petty, tete-a-tete of local 
inconsequences attract no attention. 

The spirit of Christ and the power of electricity 
are rapidly bringing the ends of the earth together. 
Men of true hearts are pained as much by suffering 
and need ten thousand miles away, as they are when 
only ten rods away. 

World mediation, world arbitration, world edu- 
cation, world commerce, world advancement, and 
world evangelization are some of the zodiacal points 
in the sky of human thought and progress. We 
have no more right to hate a race, than we have to 
hate our nearest neighbor. The fact that ''God so 



68 Man's Harmonious Development. 

loved the world," set a mark for the children of 
the Father to fall in line. 

To-day we send the hospital, the college, the 
reaper, the ship, the Bible, and the missionary to 
every part of the world. 

Man is hastening rapidly on to one great world 
society. In a few years there will be but one lan- 
guage, one religion, one race, and one common des- 
tiny for all men to aspire to. It is now within the 
possibilities of our present thought. By ignorance 
and sin men were separated. By knowledge and 
true faith men shall again be brought together. 



LECTURE III. 
THE INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY. 

The intellectual capacity is the dynamo of the 
soul. It is a high compliment to say of a man, he 
is a thinker. The intellect is that faculty of the soul 
that compares, that sees differences, that recalls past 
thoughts and experiences, that is conscious of its 
own operations, that reasons from cause to effect, 
and from effect to cause, that interprets all phenom- 
ena in harmony with universal relationship, that sees 
the what, when, where, how, why, and who of all 
things. 

Marvelous, indeed, is such «a power ! It is a gift 
of God from His own intelligence. With reference 
to its value, Milton said : 

"Who would loose, 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 
Those thoughts that wander thro' eternity!" 

Emerson said that "Intellect is the simple power 
anterior to all action or construction." 

Although the doctrine of phrenology as taught 
by Dr. Gall, of Germany, and Dr. Caldwell, of Amer- 
ica, can not be sustained in every particular, it is not 
unscientific nor unphilosophical to say we can, to a 
69 



70 Man's Harmonious Development. 

wonderful degree, improve, strengthen, and enlarge 
our brain capacity by study and expression. 

The brain, like any muscle of the body, will in- 
crease in size and efficiency by systematic use and 
training. Everything else being equal, the large, 
well-proportioned head indicates a strong intellect. 
What massive heads Webster, Napoleon, Greeley, 
Gladstone, Humboldt possessed ! 

We speak of these things to arouse the minds 
of the young to aspirations high and noble. Shake- 
speare says: 

" 'T is the mind that makes the body rich." 

Nowhere has the fullest instructions been given, 
the greatest wisdom displayed, the greatest labor 
expended, the union of mighty minds employed, as 
in the exploration and development of the intellect. 
The names of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Solon, Ag- 
ricola, Erasmus, Bacon, Hopkins, Mann, and many 
other master teachers and intellectual giants shine 
like stars of the first magnitude in the intellectual 
heavens. The world owes more to the master minds, 
from the earliest time to the present day, who have 
given it thought, truth, and intellectual stimulation, 
than she does to those who have given her material 
wealth and power. In fact, the latter are possible 
only in the light of intellectual favor. The world 
owes more to Plato and Paul than she does to all 
the Rothschilds of every nation. 

You may train the dog, but you can not educate 
him. That distinction belongs exclusively to man. 



The: Inteu^ctual Capacity. 71 

Man is a being of education. We can put nothing 
into him ; but how infinite are the possibilities of the 
"drawing out process!" 

Ah, what word, what voice, what book, what 
speech, what look, what gesture, what accident, what 
incident, what picture, what music aroused the giant 
intellects of the past, whose deeds are nailed to the 
quivering pages of history, and are yet to awaken 
the mighty prophets of the dawning future ! Ah, in 
the brain of every boy and girl what amazing possi- 
bilities ! Garfield often said : "When I meet a boy 
on the street, no matter how ragged, I can not help 
but doff my hat to him. I do not know but that 
beneath that ragged coat there may be a Caesar or a 
Shakespeare/' 

But what is the measure of the intellect? How 
may we tell who has a great intellect? Can intel- 
lectual power be measured at all? We answer yes, 
without hesitancy. But that one man is a lawyer, 
and another is a painter, that one man is a doctor, 
and another is a farmer, does not determine which 
has the greatest intellect. The vocation by which 
men earn their bread and butter is not the test of 
intellectual ability. The choice of vocation is often 
a mere chance or matter of coincidence. 

Neither is the man of genius always the superior 
intellectually. Genius often is the brain gone to 
seed on some one point. The mechanical knowledge 
possessed, or the ripeness of scholarship, is not the 
full measure of great intellectual ability. What, 
then, is the test of intellectual ability ? 



72 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Intellectual ability (such as we defined the intel- 
lect to be at the beginning of this lecture) is the 
clearness and the compass with which it grasps the 
problem of life, the means to that end, and the limit 
of its success. In other words, the measure of the 
intellect is the balance with which it works toward 
the true destiny of life. 

Napoleon had a great intellect in some things, 
but he was very weak in the main thing. Aaron 
Burr was a brilliant man in some ways, but he was 
very deficient in other ways. Byron was an intel- 
lectual genius in some ways, but he was an imbecile 
in other ways. You see the trouble with these men 
was, they lacked balance. Life itself means balance, 
harmony. Without balance life must eventually be 
a failure in every case. Heaven itself is eternity's 
loadstone which gathers to itself nothing but the bal- 
anced, or those in harmony with it. 

Jesus Himself said, "Be perfect." That simply 
means to be balanced, or to come into harmony. 
This doctrine gives new inspiration and new encour- 
agement to every anxious soul. The demand is not 
genius, not great and peculiar gifts, but the round- 
ing out of a full, symmetrical manhood and woman- 
hood. 

The masses do not use right judgment when it 
comes to passing upon the merits of real success. 
Often the world applauds when God frowns. Often 
the world frowns when God applauds. The very 
men, nine cases out of ten perhaps, whose names 
are flaunted before the wondering eyes of men are 
worse than failures in God's sight. 



The Inteu,ectuai, Capacity. 73 

There are thousands of men and women whom 
the world knows comparatively little about, but 
whose intellects in the true reckoning of things 
would march at the head of God's brainy army. 

The question is not how much chemistry, mathe- 
matics, history, or literature you know, but what 
do you know about the demands of a balanced life ? 

Chemistry, physiology, mathematics, astronomy, 
biology, and all of the sciences and ologies, we must 
understand, are but means to further a great end. 
To what purpose is physiology, if the possessor of 
this knowledge still goes on injuring his body? To 
what purpose are the principles of ethics, if the per- 
son knowing these things lives a life of dishonesty 
and shame? 

In what does brain power consist? Is it simply 
the ability to paste on the walls of its memory the 
few facts of its study? Is brain power the ability 
to sponge up facts? A man may know all about 
history as facts, he may be able to make any analy- 
sis in chemistry, he may be able to tell all about the 
movements of the solar system, he may be able to 
recite the verses and the wisdom of the world's liter- 
ature; but suppose he is not able to see the relation 
of all this knowledge to the true object of life, and 
knows not how to apply it, can he be said to be 
intellectually great? No, no! Our ideas of intel- 
lectual ability need to undergo a reconstruction. 

The business of the intellect is to gather knowl- 
edge, and harmonize this knowledge into truth. To 
know a thing as a fact is worth something, but to 



74 Man's Harmonious Development. 

be able to apply it to the great object of life is the 
climax of brain power. We contend, therefore, that 
balance of brain, working toward the true object of 
life, is the measure of intellectual power. 

There are thousands of people among us who 
out of the perplexities of life note every phase of 
it, and deduct such truth as is demanded. They take 
into consideration the great mass of contradictions, 
they wisely sif I out the wheat of truth, and go smil- 
ingly on to eternal success. I emphasize that word, 
Eternal. Many people are counted brainy who can 
go no further than figure out the relation of things 
material. They lack the power to grasp eternal 
destinies. 

Now, the object of education, or life if you 
please, is to stir up and lead out the whole soul (not 
a part of it) to the broadest ranges and the highest 
altitudes — the realization of the object of life. 

The higher institutions of learning especially 
have for their aim this object. The boy or girl 
should not be educated because you hope to make a 
lawyer or a teacher of him or her, but because the 
boy and the girl possess an immortal soul, whose 
mighty possibilities ought to be aroused, brought 
out into the sunshine of life, and cultivated to the 
highest beauty and grandeur of the divine Ideal. 

The man or woman is greater than the profes- 
sion. The profession is the outgrowth of the man, 
not the man the outgrowth of the profession. The 
profession is simply to sustain the man while the 
man is evolving. 



The Intellectual Capacity. 75 

What matters it that Cincinnatus was a farmer? 
that Homer's profession is not known ? that Beecher 
was a preacher? that Lincoln was a lawyer? that 
Hugo was a writer? Better, they were men reach- 
ing up to soul realization! 

Indeed, how much we owe to Moses, David, 
Socrates, Plato, Paul, Erasmus, Neander, Willard, 
Browning, Tennyson, and thousands of other great 
souls, eternity alone will tell. And let me say here, 
nothing so stirs up the mind as the study of the 
lives of these great souls. The study of biography 
is an important factor in the education of the in- 
tellect. 

The thought should not be to live simply the 
''intellectual life," as Hamerton suggests in one of 
his books. That makes the intellect the end of life, 
instead of the means. The intellect is the power 
which must help in the evolution of a symmetrical 
manhood and womanhood. The exact trouble is, 
that among too many of us the several capacities 
are not cultivated with a balanced manhood and 
womanhood in view. 

Now, the intellect is, as we have said, a means 
to an end. It must be awakened. In other words, 
it must be "born again." It may have existed, but 
it must live. It has been led, but it must lead. We 
are moved by our feeling, rather than by thinking. 
Man is to be a thinker, not a feeler. 

We hesitate, wait, defer, lag, die! We are the 
poor products of our unfavorable surroundings, in- 
stead of molding and building our environments. 



76 Man's Harmonious Development. 

We accept where we ought to reject, and reject 
where we ought to accept. In fine, we are the clods 
of the least resistance. What we are depends upon 
the amount and the kind of thinking we do. God 
says, and we know by experience, "Seek, and you 
shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 
Ask, and you shall receive." 

There is a tendency, and this tendency has 
grown to alarming proportions, that all preparation 
in the way of education must contribute to the solu- 
tion of the "bread and butter problem." That the 
boy must learn to read in order that he may know 
how to study stock reports, bank accounts, farm 
journals, and the receipt book; that geography is 
simply a study which is to show the lad where he 
may find climate, soil, gold, silver, fruits, commerce ; 
that grammar is the science of expressing one's self 
well in driving a good bargain; that physiology 
is the science of prolonging human life to accumu- 
late vast riches ; that arithmetic is the means of 
reckoning the number of pigs or dollars one may 
possess; that the whole of life is, first, last, and 
always, "to make money." Money! Ah, "what 
does it profit if a man gain the whole world and lose 
his life !" 

This whole muddle of the soul is caused by a 
complete misunderstanding of the object of life 
itself. Let the boy or the girl know from the very 
start that these things we have just spoken of are but 
the bread and clothing outfits, which are to sustain 
the body while they are doing business for time and 



The Intellectual Capacity. 77 

endless eternities. The greed for gold, if not 
checked soon, must unmistakably weaken our final 
intellectual powers. The very fact that men can 
succeed better in the business world because they 
are educated, is emphasized too much of late. The 
college does not stand for gold or material wealth 
and power. The college stands for the unfolding 
of developed manhood and womanhood. It must 
be the last institution in the world to deceive men as 
to what is the true aim of life. The college should 
be an armory of protestation against the material- 
ism, extravagance, sensuality, greed, and one-sided- 
ness of the times. 

Ninety-nine out of every one hundred young 
men never complete the high-school course, to say 
nothing of a college course, giving as a reason, "I 
know enough already to make a living." What a 
pity! A living! The squirrel and the honey bee 
know that much. Are we, made in the image of God 
Himself, to put ourselves on the level with the squir- 
rel? The majority of the people imagine that the 
college is an institution to prepare men and women 
for a professional life. NO ! No ! It is a place 
where the young are prepared for life. And life is 
not a profesion, it is The business. 

The masses, however, are waking up to the im- 
portance of the necessity for a specific preparation 
for life. The value of higher education is becoming 
more and more appreciated. Dr. Harris, after 
twenty-five years of close study of college statistics, 



78 Man's Harmonious Development. 

finds that the quota receiving a higher education 
to-day is three times greater than it was in 1872. 

Dr. S. N. Fellows, of Iowa, has made the obser- 
vation of every man who has held office in the United 
States, from the Supreme Court judges down to the 
members of Congress, and finds that college-bred 
men furnish thirty-two per cent of the Vice-Presi- 
dents, sixty-five per cent of the Presidents, seventy- 
three per cent of the judges of the Supreme Court, 
and eighty-three per cent of the Supreme Justices. 
Now, as there is only one college graduate to about 
seven hundred and fifty men, the opportunities for 
securing places of honor in our national life is not- 
ably apparent. 

Dr. Thwing also has made this significant dis- 
covery, that out of fifteen thousand one hundred and 
forty-five persons whose names appear in our na- 
tional biography thirty-five per cent were college 
bred. A well-read man was furnished with this 
same cyclopedia, and was asked to select from it 
one hundred Americans whose names would be im- 
mortal. After careful study a list of one hundred 
and fifty were selected, including reformers, teach- 
ers, soldiers, preachers, statesmen, inventors, busi- 
ness men, physicians, and lawyers, and it was found 
that seventy-five per cent were college graduates. 

The ability even to make money is increased by 
the advantages of a college education. To present 
the facts is proof enough. A. T. Stewart was edu- 
cated for the ministry, became a teacher, and then 
turned his attention to business, amassing a fortune 



The Intellectual Capacity. 79 

of forty million dollars. The first of the wealthy 
Rothschilds was educated for the Jewish priesthood, 
but turned his keen mind to money-making, whose 
accumulated millions carry on the largest banking 
interests in the world. Abram Hewitt, the mil- 
lionaire, philanthropist, and good citizen of New 
York, was a college graduate. Samuel J. Tilden, 
another millionaire and honored citizen, was a college 
graduate. Henry Roosevelt, who left two million 
dollars to found a hospital in New York City, was 
a college graduate. So we might go on and name 
Stevens, Depew, Whitney, Fairchild, Choate, Lowe, 
the Astors, Vanderbilts, Biddle, Rush, Tudors, 
Durant, and many others ; but enough. 

We simply speak of these things to show that an 
education leads the mind out in every direction, 
which is not incompatible with success in any one 
direction. 

But many say, "I can never get a college edu- 
cation." Listen, my friend ! If you are under fifty, 
have good health, single, and no one dependent upon 
you, you can go to college. If you are too poor to 
pay your bills as some do, you can work your way. 
Thousands do this the world over. If you can not 
do this, you would never amount to anything if some 
kind friend would pay your way for you. 

If it is impracticable or impossible for you to 
go to college, you can bring the college to your 
home. Go to some college graduate or good scholar, 
tell him that you want to educate yourself, and are 
willing to work hard to do it. He will then outline 



So Man's Harmonious Development. 

a program of study, including history, literature, 
science, philosophy, economics, and so on. Put in 
your spare moments. Study hard. Associate as 
much as possible with educated men and women. 
Attend every place, and improve every opportunity 
where you will receive inspiration, outlook, and en- 
couragement. In five short and happiest years of 
your life you will be amazed and proud to see how 
much you have done, how much you have learned, 
how much mental and soul power you have gained, 
with what ease you are able to grasp difficult ques- 
tions, with what cheer and beauty the light of a new 
day spreads out before you. They are yours — for 
this world and the next. Sickness can never take 
them away. They will not go with the loss of prop- 
erty or burn in the withering flames. They will 
cheer you in disappointment. They will be your 
friends when all others have fled. When alone 
you will have the company of prophets, seers, poets, 
scholars, orators, scientists, and the merry talker. 
And when death causes this tenement of clay to 
grow cold, and the sweet voices and faces are heard 
and seen here no more — the knowledge, the soul 
growth and expansion you have gained, will serve 
you most of all "over there." Indeed, the intellect 
is an unlimited power to an unlimited end. 

Bryant in his beautiful tribute to the death of 
Schiller says in one place : 

" Then who can tell how deep, how bright, 
The abyss of glory opened round ? 
How thought and feeling flowed like light, 
Through ranks of being without bound ?" 



The IntsUvEctuai, Capacity. 8i 

Yes, "Knowledge is power." It is a means, not 
an end. The struggle for knowledge is of more 
value to the struggler, than the mere possession of 
the knowledge. In fact, mere knowledge of itself 
is of but little worth. The knowledge we gain must 
lead to truth. The scattered bricks of the mason 
are of no value until with skill he builds a beautiful 
house. So knowledge must be wrought into truth 
and life. The great idea of education is to lead the 
soul out that it may see its relation, its place in God's 
ecomony, its destiny. 

It is quite possible for a man to possess much 
knowledge, but not possess much truth. Truth is 
related knowledge breathing with life and divine 
purpose. Many people know that the Pilgrim 
Fathers landed in America in 1620; but how many 
know the philosophy of their beliefs and the leaven 
of their spirit in the evolution of this country? 

Knowledge has to do with one thing, truth has 
to do with two or more things. You may know this 
or that as facts, but the question is, what has that 
knowledge to do with you and humanity? The 
arteries, bones, muscles, ligaments, tissues, blood, 
etc., are of no particular consequence unless they are 
associated with a living, pulsating, moving, think- 
ing being. 

So in the education of the soul the intellect first 

takes in knowledge as facts, single and unrelated. 

It, however, must not stop there. It must take this 

knowledge, like the weaver takes the warp and 

6 



82 Man's Harmonious Development. 

woof, and weave it into a beautiful, serviceable piece 
of cloth. 

Now all truth must ascend to the completion of 
one final destiny. To trace truth from thing to thing 
is not enough. It must be from thing to life, life 
to man, and from man to destiny. You see a tree. 
You say it bears fruit. It is good to eat. It sus- 
tains life. Well ! Can you go no further ? You have 
got to the animal. Must we stop there? Why, my 
dear friend, that tree is simply a means to a 
great, immortal destiny. That is, the tree is for 
food, food is for man, man is for eternity. Nothing 
really exists for itself. The spring is for the river, 
the river for the lake, the lake for the ocean, the 
ocean for man, and man for God. 

We repeat again, the work of the intellect is to 
gather knowledge, to weave this knowledge into 
truth, to harmonize this truth with truth, and to 
direct the many springs of truth toward the river of 
eternal and God-like destiny. 

It is not our purpose, nor would it be in place 
in a lecture of this kind, to go into any psychological 
analysis of the intellect ; but we do believe it will be 
well for us to consider for a moment a few of the 
mental operations which are most essential to the 
acquirement of knowledge and truth. 

Before the mind is able to know, it must be able 
to give attention. Before the general gives his 
command, he says, "Attention !" 

Attention is the listening, watching attitude of 
the soul, alert to catch every whisper and to note 
every relation. 



The Inteixectuai, Capacity. 83 

Relative to the ability to amass knowledge and 
truth, more people fail in the power of the continuity 
of attention than anything else. If you are able to 
hold the soul upon a given fact until the sunlight of 
solution shines, you are a master. "The child is un- 
able to give long and consecutive attention. Like 
a tilting butterfly he flits from one thing to another 
too quickly to get any clear conception of anything. 
Here is the first great secret of intellectual success. 
The mind must be held with a fixed gaze upon the 
question in hand until the soul burns its way into 
the very core of the same. 

The highest type of attention is relative atten- 
tion. That is, the mind sees or gives attention to 
many things for the sake of one thing. It notes 
the action or existence of many things as they relate 
to each other, and through this process of induction 
the mind deduces truth. 

Now while the power of attention is being ex- 
erted, the intellectual processes of comparison and 
contrast, or association and dissociation, are carried 
on. The known is compared with the unknown. In 
fact, we can only go from the known to the un- 
known. To-day helps solve to-morrow, to-morrow 
eternity. So one fact or truth helps to solve another 
fact or truth. The glory of our life is that we are 
standing upon the shoulders of all preceding ages. 

In trying to hold the attention upon a given fact 
we are not simply to stare at it. We must particu- 
larize, name, number, and relate the facts and truth 
as they emerge to the surface. "We have eyes, but 



84 Man's Harmonious Development. 

we see not. We have ears, but we hear not. Minds 
have we, but we understand not." Ask the majority 
of people to describe a certain person whom they 
have seen, and note the lack of attention in their 
inability to describe the person. People go to the 
world's exposition, they see a great deal in bulk, 
but they see nothing in particular. I have asked 
farmers whether the cow's ears were before, behind, 
or under the horns, and not more than one-half were 
able with certainty to state the exact location. Many 
people complain of a poor memory, when in fact the 
trouble is the lack of attention. 

Whatever the fact may be which is before us for 
consideration, it should have our full attention, while 
the powers of comparison and contrast, association 
and dissociation, skillfully sift out every fact and 
relation. In the process of noting the evolution of 
things and their relation, as they appear before the 
great eye of the soul — attention — let us emphasize 
the necessity of marking especially those things 
which were meant to be seen, and not the surface 
merely. Do you get my point? 

Now, when the soul has hung the facts and 
truths of its observation and thinking upon the walls 
of its being, it must be able to go at any time, in the 
night as well as in the day, on the shortest notice, 
and find them. This power we call memory. 

How blessed, wonderful, and divine is the power 
of recollection ! The sweet voices of yesterday, the 
joys of innocent childhood, the bright experiences of 
life, our virtues, and, alas, our vices ! may come at 



The Intellectual Capacity. 85 

the command of the soul, or flit through the mind 
like the passing of birds, or intrude upon us when 
we would gladly forget them. 

No thought, no deed, no feeling, is ever erased 
from the retention tablet of the soul. This is proof 
of man's immortality. We may be unable to recall 
a certain thing at a given time, but it is there never- 
theless, and should the proper association, or the 
spring of its tongue be touched, it would play sweet 
music or thunder peal after peal of remorse, as the 
case might be. The absolute power of recollection 
makes possible a judgment-day. 

The ability to recall at will may be wonderfully 
strengthened. The rules of mnemonics are very 
simple indeed. They are, attention, committing, 
and reviewing often. In all of our listening, read- 
ing, thinking, and doing we should have this thought 
in mind, "I want to recall this again." Such a course 
would naturally lead to a life of virtue and nobility 
also. 

At this point we see that the intellect needs cre- 
ative power. It has the ability to note things, and 
to recall them. Now it needs a power which will 
enable it to weave, or build, or embellish life with 
beautiful and divine creations, or ideals. We have 
such a power. It is called the imagination. 

The forts of armies, the pictures on the canvas, 
the statues of marble, the house in which we live, 
the rushing locomotive, the majestic ocean steamer, 
were first created by the Imagination. Irving thus 
beautifully describes it: "It is the divine attribute 



86 Man's Harmonious Development. 

of the imagination that it is irrepressible, uncon- 
finable ; that, when the real world is shut out, it can 
create a world for itself, and with necromantic power 
can conjure up glorious shapes and forms and bril- 
liant visions to make solitude populous, and irradi- 
ate the gloom of the dungeon." Shakespeare, even 
in words more beautiful, says : 

" The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, and from earth to 

heaven ; 
And, as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothings 
A local habitation and a name." 

We may, however, let the imagination have 
wings too freely. This inventive power must be 
kept within the bounds of decency, rationality, and 
harmony. 

Much of the sorrow, crime, and superstition in 
the world to-day is the direct result of uncontrolled 
imagination. The great danger of the average novel 
is, that it fires the imagination to abnormal flames, 
while the higher faculties are kept in the rear. To 
read good fiction is a benefit, but to read more fiction 
than anything else is destructive to the best think- 
ing, calmness, and self-control. Fifteen per cent of 
the total output of books published in America for 
the year 1904 were novels. That is, of the 8,291 
books published, 1,243 were novels. We might also 
remark here, that of the civilized nations America 
ranks among the lowest in the publication of books. 



The Intellectual Capacity. 87 

It is well to say that the imagination needs toning 
down, it needs balance, it needs solidity, and noth- 
ing contributes better to this end more than history, 
philosophy, science, poetry, and the writings of our 
best essayists. The woman who is a slave to fashion, 
gossips with the neighbors, and reads nothing but 
novels, can not help but He nervous, discontented, 
and abnormally imaginative. 

What we have said of too much fiction reading, 
we can say of the theater. In most of the theatrical 
plays the lurid, obscene, and the trifling are attract- 
ively and with suavity presented to the gaping 
audience, who live and relive what they have seen 
and heard, until they are totally unfit for anything 
sound or serious. We are foolish enough ourselves, 
and see enough foolishness about us, without spend- 
ing much time in reading about it, or seeing it en- 
acted on the stage. 

The imagination must be brought into harmony 
with the desirability of the real. It should illume 
the ideal. 

Therefore the faculty which must balance the 
creations of the intellect, and must have consider- 
ation as the soul rushes, with more than lightning 
speed, to the goal of action, we call reason. 

Common sense, good sense, are plain terms for 
reason. Reason is the ability to note the harmony, 
or the lack of it, in a given relation. This power is 
God-like in its very nature. To know the why and 
how of all things was the real aim and destiny of the 
Grecian Nation. Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and 



88 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Aristotle tried to reason out the philosophy of being. 
They did not succeed very well, but they taught the 
world how to reason. 

"Come, let us reason together," is the voice of 
God. He who will not reason refuses to exercise 
his noblest power. There are people, however, who 
will say (and their number is legion) : "I have my 
feelings about this question ; I have always believed 
as I believe now, and I do not propose to change 
now, no matter what proof you bring." Toor, 
shriveled, bony, dried-up souls! 

We have all the sympathy in the world for the 
man or woman who can not see the truth, but our 
patience is overtaxed when they refuse to try to 
see it. It is evidence, per se, of cowardice and weak- 
ness. 

To follow our reason, enlightened by all the evi- 
dence that can be found, is to follow our real selves. 
What a travesty, what absurdity, what a pitiful con- 
tradiction, what insanity it is, that many will not do 
what they reason to be right ! If it is good to follow 
our best judgment in some things, why is it not best 
to follow it in all things? Reason says, and God 
says, "This is the way, walk ye in it." 

Now, Faith is no small factor in the ability to 
reason well. Faith is the calm of resignation to the 
conclusion of reason. It is the giving up of self 
to the real self, to the Ideal self, which reason points 
out. 

In order to reason well, we must be honest with 
ourselves ; we must lay aside all prejudice ; we must 



The Inteu,ectuai, Capacity. 89 

have a passionate love for truth; we must not stop 
until a satisfactory conclusion has been reached. 
The reason that Lincoln was able to reason so 
cogently, and to make truth so simple, and reason 
to such lengths, was that he was honest, and loved 
the truth above all fading things even more than 
his life. 

In order, too, that the reasoner may be the best 
possible thinker, he must be theistic; God-centered, 
if you please. I say this without any thought of 
dogmatic religion. He must be spiritualized; that 
is, he must be in love with Him who is the Truth, 
who is the very center around which all truth must 
revolve. To refuse to follow God, or to fail to un- 
derstand God, is to refuse to follow, or fail to know, 
the mighty tugging of God's gravitation. 

The first thing to do in God's great college of life 
is, the quick recognition of Him as its first great 
Teacher. This can not be emphasized too much. 
All thinking, to be far reaching and of the highest 
value, must move majestically on to the completion 
of the Ideal Man. Now, the place of reason in this 
sum of all life, is to adjust the subjective Ideal to 
the objective Ideal. Many men and women the 
world over have within them some intuitive knowl- 
edge of or desire to reach the Ideal within the soul. 
But the soul needs a real, actual Ideal without, to 
which the imperfect ideal within may be adjusted. 
Now, God has given us just such an Ideal in the per- 
son of Jesus Christ. Therefore we declare again, 
from another angle, all of our reasoning must be 



90 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Christocentric ; that is, it must center in the Christ as 
God's Ideal, toward which the rush of life and as- 
piration must sweep. 

Now in the process of reasoning, as we have 
already said, we reach conclusions; that is, definite 
results. These conclusions settle into beliefs. This 
is the fruit of reason. It is inevitable. Not to have 
a belief relative to a certain matter, is to declare 
that you have not thought or reasoned much about 
it. Of course, in many cases and for a long time 
we may be doing much thinking, but be in a state 
of mental suspension. Belief is simply a system of 
individual interpretation. Belief is the settled con- 
clusion of the judgment. Many people mistake feel- 
ing for belief. They are not the same at all. Many 
have plenty of feeling, but lack grounds for it. The 
emotion for some cause has been stirred, but the 
sensibilities have not labored in the least. 

It is our duty as rational beings to systematize 
the truth we gather from time to time. We should 
as soon as possible formulate our ideas into beliefs. 
We should have some theory as to life, our relations 
to each other, and to God, and to destiny. We can 
not afford to toss with a careless hand the great 
questions of life aside. To call ourselves agnostics, 
is really to declare ourselves mortally dumb or in- 
excusably stubborn. We can afford to rest in the 
lazy satisfaction of "I do n't know" in some matters 
which amount to nothing. But when it comes to our 
relation to God and the destiny beyond, the question 
is too great to be tossed aside with flippant indiffer- 
ence. 



The Inteixectuai, Capacity. 91 

But in seeking to establish a belief we must not 
demand the impossible. We must rest content to 
base our beliefs upon a part of the observations that 
might be made, and the evidence that might be ex- 
amined. Of course, the more important the ques- 
tion in hand may be, the more careful we should be 
in coming to a final conclusion. While on the other 
hand, we must not refuse to decide a question be- 
cause of its very magnitude. Such questions as our 
relation to our fellows and our relations to God and 
to destiny, are weighty indeed; but as they have so 
much to do with our immediate life and the future 
world, we can not afford to spend too much time in 
parleying or postponing decision. 

Then when it comes to a decision which has to 
do with any question, we must not spend too much 
thought or time upon it relatively. We must not be 
like the young husband who spent all the money 
he had for a tub of butter, but bought no bread to 
use with the butter. 

Life is too short, and there are too many things 
to learn, to spend too much time on any one thing. 
Here again the thought of balance crops out. 

There is a serious danger of those who are pass- 
ing the meridian of life to fail to adjust their beliefs 
to new truth. If they fail in this important matter 
of adjustment to new knowledge and truth, all ad- 
vancement is forever ended. They then begin to 
lose their memory, they become narrow, childish, 
intolerant, and at last burn out like a worthless lump 
of charcoal. There must be a constant effort not 



92 Man's Harmonious Development. 

only to adjust ourselves to new knowledge and truth, 
but we should continually seek new knowledge and 
truth. Then when death does overtake us we shall 
be found to be a live coal, from which a beautiful 
flame shall again blaze forth in another world. 

Now, in gathering knowledge, in deducing truth, 
and in formulating our beliefs, we should endeavor 
to classify or gather all this into systems. This abil- 
ity, to my mind, is the mark of the true scholar. 
The effort should be to gather in the scattering 
facts, to coin it into knowledge, to deduce truth, 
to formulate beliefs with reference to certain rela- 
tions, and to focus the sum of all these things into 
one grand system, or ideal of life. 

Theoretically speaking, perhaps the time will 
never come to mortal man when he will be able to 
classify all knowledge into one grand system, or 
science. The struggle of life, however, is in that 
direction. We are now with wings of dizzy flight 
rising higher and higher, and as the stars of im- 
mortal truth become brighter and brighter the specks 
of fading systems and the dots of human differences 
become dimmer and dimmer. 

We see this process has been going on, and is 
still going on and on. We went from idolatry to the 
worship of the true God; from gods many to one 
God ; from tribes to great nations ; from nations to 
the idea of one great brotherhood of man ; from the 
chaos of a multitude of facts to science ; from specu- 
lations to philosophy ; from problems to mathemat- 
ics ; from the feudal exactions to a system of law. 
So we might go on and illustrate further. 



The Intellectual Capacity. 93 

We see in all our attempts to classify, however, 
there is the confusion of overlapping. This, how- 
ever, more than anything else, proves that all truth 
is, after all, harmonious, and that one system might 
include the whole. It does, but no one but God can 
comprehend it. 

It is hard to tell just where botany leaves off, 
and zoology begins. The sciences of biology, phys- 
iology, physics, psychology, theology, and other so- 
called sciences and ologies do not leave off and "be- 
gin. These are but the classifications of men to 
accommodate their ignorance and the practical de- 
mands of the hour. 

In all our nights after truth we should constantly 
balance our pride with the grace of humility. All 
true men and wise men feel the more they learn the 
less they know, or rather how much there is to be 
known. 

Pope said : 

" A little learning is a dangerous thing, 
Drink deep, or taste not the Pyrean spring." 

Indeed/ it would be unsafe to stop there ; but we 
must begin with a little learning, and then go on 
up the hill to an eternity of truth. 

Nothing is so unbecoming to the would-be 
scholar as vanity. Such a spirit is the essence of 
boast, and boasting is the crow of a fence-post expe- 
rience. He imagines there are no more worlds to 
conquer, and spends his time now in strutting about 
showing what little he does know. 



94 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Every fact we learn, every truth we grasp, every 
system we embrace, profoundly teaches us that we 
have gathered but a few pebbles on the stretching 
shores of an ever-expanding ocean of truth. 

We begin with the beautiful flower, and go on 
up to the dazzling gem, to the plunging, foaming 
cataract, up to the shining mountain peak, pass the 
soaring eagle in his dizzy flight, and thrust the 
quivering spears of our thoughts into the very heart 
of gravitation, and as our pride begins to boast we 
remind ourselves that we have poorly traced only 
one thread in the limitless mantle of God's thoughts. 
If now the searcher after truth is able to see life 
as a mighty ocean, and his being as the ship of a 
precious destiny, while knowledge and truth are but 
the sails with which to catch the kisses of God's 
breath, wooing him to heaven's shore — how beau- 
tiful and blessed it is for him to study the chart of 
such a voyage ! 

In the study after knowledge and truth we should 
cultivate a modest, yet a manly and womanly inde- 
pendence. If each soul would be frank to speak and 
live the truth as he sees it, what wonderful advance- 
ment we would make! Thousands have not the 
courage of their convictions. All great souls became 
great by following the path of their convictions. 
Without such princes the world would come to 
naught. As each one of us is so limited, and as 
truth is so big, God made us all different in some 
ways, so that much truth might be brought to light, 
and that we might love each other more for his per- 



The Intellectual Capacity. 95 

sonal contribution. Men are interesting to us in 
proportion as they are true to themselves. We love 
to hear certain persons talk we say, but it is because 
they speak their true selves in their own way. Imi- 
tation is tiresome. 

All men love bravery and manly independence. 
But the cur who is afraid to speak forth his soul is 
despised by those at whose feet he tremblingly 
cringes. We are instruments in God's hands to 
bring knowledge and truth to light. Study and ex- 
pression is incumbent upon every one who has the 
mind and the faculties of expression. 

In the process of our intellectual development we 
should cultivate the positive rather than the nega- 
tive side of our intellects. We should be construct- 
ive, rather than destructive. We admit that the 
wrong must be known, that the transgressor must 
be warned; that the breakers of all truth must be 
walled against; that sophistries must be picked to 
pieces and exposed; that truth and right of every 
nature must be defended, — but in all this we must 
be sure to give the right when once the wrong is 
pointed out. We must cultivate a fruitful garden, 
instead of building a fort of defense. Some people 
are forever pointing out this and that wrong, but 
are never heard to point out the beauties of this and 
that right. He who stops when he has killed the 
enemy, has quit when the work is only half done. 

A reformer is one who makes over a thing from 
the wrong to the right. 

To be constructive, we must build according to 



96 Man's Harmonious Development. 

the plans and specifications given us by the All- 
wise Architect. We can not make too much of this. 
To try to do anything less is simply patchwork, 
veneering. The intellect is the mighty lever whose 
efforts must lift the soul nearer the hand of Him 
who made the intellect to please Himself. 

To build up a harmonious manhood and woman- 
hood is the work of the soul. The intellect has a 
large place to fill in this divine building. And if 
we would apply the words of Longfellow in spirit, 
in recognition of the Master Builder, as he applied 
them to the State, we would succeed a thousand 
times better than we do. He said : 

" We know what master laid thy keel, 
What workman wrought thy ribs of steel, 
Who made each mast and sail and rope, 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope." 

The limit of intellectual development is infinite. 
The intellects of David, Paul, Socrates, Plato, Eras- 
mus, Bacon, Spencer, Marshall, Lincoln, were not 
freaks, but true representatives, leading on to the 
great possibilities of what the masses may become. 
Perhaps as long as the world stands, great intellects, 
like towering mountain peaks, will stand head and 
shoulders above the masses. But as these giants 
rise up and up into the regions of intellectual sub- 
limity, they lift age after age the masses all about 
them. And to-day where the giants stand the 
masses will stand in a few generations. 



The Intsixectuai, Capacity. 97 

Volumes alone can tell of the vast achievements 
of the intellect. To record the creations of the mind 
in poetry, in song, in invention, in reforms, in laws 
in the United States alone would tire and soon over- 
burden the printing-presses of the world simply to 
tabulate them. The hundreds of papers, magazines, 
journals, and dailies do not tell a millionth part of 
the thoughts and deeds that daily sweep over the 
souls of men. 

Sublime, indeed, is the power of the intellect! 
It has girded the earth with ribs of steel; it has 
plucked the lightnings from the clouds, and hurled 
them out over the world quivering with messages of 
life and death; it has dug from the bowels of the 
earth gold, silver, brass, iron, and diamonds, and 
fashioned them into articles of might and beauty; 
it has calculated the distances of the stars, meas- 
ured their volume, and analyzed their long pencils 
of light reaching into millions of miles, and told the 
composition of the bodies from which that light 
emanated; it has computed the movements of the 
heavenly bodies with such accuracy, that we are 
able to know the exact time of the eclipses hundreds 
of years before they occur ; it scans the heavens and 
notes the atmosphere, calculates the rate of the same, 
and warns us of the approaching storm ; it can tun- 
nel mountains, cut great ocean canals, tame the king 
of the jungle, bring to earth the soaring eagle, edu- 
cate the ignorant, Christianize the heathen, and lift 
men to heights of glory, peace, and power. 

No wonder David, the sweet singer of Israel, 
7 



98 Man's Harmonious Development. 

cried out when he caught this vision : "What is man, 
that thou art mindful of him ? #nd the son of man, 
that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a 
little lower than God, and hast crowned him with 
glory and honor. Thou madest him to have domin- 
ion over the works of thy hands ; thou hast put all 
things under his feet: all sheep, and oxen, yea, and 
the beasts of the field ; the fowls of the air, and the 
fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the 
paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent 
is Thy name in all the earth." 

The intellect then, ladies and gentlemen, being 
of such vast importance and so capable of develop- 
ment, it behooves us to put forth every effort to 
bring it to the highest proficiency, power, and 
beauty. 



LECTURE IV. 
THE MORAL CAPACITY. 

"The Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? 
and why is thy countenance fallen?" Cain had just 
murdered his brother Abel. But who told Cain that 
he had done wrong? Ah, there was some capacity, 
faculty, or original instinct, call it what we may, 
thundered in the guilty soul of Cain the enormity 
and the awfulness of his crime. 

Do you see that boy standing in front of the 
store there? He is fighting a battle, a fearful bat- 
tle. You see no enemy, you hear no clash of arms, 
but there is a heroic struggle going on. Before 
the boy is a barrel of apples. He sees no one. He 
believes himself to be alone. "It would be no harm 
to take just one," he tries to persuade himself. "No 
one will ever know it," he continues. "But," says 
a voice within, which causes him to start with fear, 
"it is wrong! It is stealing!" The boy gathers 
himself up, and, with the flash of a conqueror glis- 
tening in his eyes, he says to himself : "I know it is 
wrong, and I will never take what does not belong 
to me." And off he walks, whistling a tune, not of 
retreat, but of victory. 

Yes, there is such a thing as wrong, and there is 
such a thing as right. Nothing so distinguishes 
99 



ioo Man's Harmonious Development. 

the greatness of man as his ability to know and to 
feel the facts of right and wrong. It is with these 
two facts this lecture has to do. 

God has so created man that if he does the right, 
as he knows and feels, he must feel the sweet har- 
mony of peace play anthems of joy and victory in 
his soul. But if, on the other hand, he does that 
which he knows and feels to be wrong, the troubled 
harp of the soul will dole forth discord and notes of 
grief, condemnation, confusion, and defeat. 

Right, in a moral sense, is a feeling of conform- 
ity to known truth. Wrong is a feeling of non- 
conformity to known truth. 

We may know a thing to be right or wrong from 
an intellectual standpoint, and we may feel a thing 
to be right or wrong from a moral standpoint. 

Let us cite one example to illustrate this point. 
The clerk is asked to measure off one yard of cloth 
for a customer. If the clerk measures off thirty-six 
inches of cloth he knows from an intellectual stand- 
point he has done right, and he feels from a moral 
standpoint he has done right also. But suppose the 
clerk has measured off less than one yard of cloth, 
for which he was paid, he knows from an intellec- 
tual standpoint he did wrong, and he feels from a 
moral standpoint he did wrong. Just so the moral 
capacity has to do with the feeling of approbation or 
disapprobation. Man has a distinct moral capacity, 
because he is able to feel the right or the wrong of 
his thoughts and actions. The intellect tells us as 
a fact whether this or that is right or wrong. The 



Ths Moral Capacity. ioi 

moral capacity tells us with a feeling whether this 
or that is right or wrong. In other words, intellect 
is knowledge, while the moral capacity is feeling. 

Many philosophers from the most ancient times 
have labored with wonderful ingenuity to prove the 
criterion or the grounds of right and wrong. Di- 
verse, indeed, have been their opinions. The masses 
perhaps never think much about the philosophy of 
this most important subject. If, however, we knew 
the cause or the grounds of our moral nature, we 
would be much better able to cultivate and fortify it. 

Some claim that the moral nature is simply an- 
other phase of our intellectual deductions. That it 
is simply a decision of the intellect. If this were 
true, those having the greatest intellects would be 
the most moral. Or that all would be equally moral 
as intellectual. This we all know is not true. It is 
a common observation among us every day to see 
men and women who are keen, quick, and strong 
intellectually, who display a woeful lack of moral 
conscience. We have some notable examples in his- 
tory proving this fact. Napoleon was a giant in 
intellect, but he was destitute of high moral feel- 
ing. So we might name Burns, Byron, Eliot, Rous- 
seau, and many others. 

Others claim that our "highest happiness" is the 
reason we choose the right and avoid the wrong. 
This, however, makes man a mere pleasure-seeker. 
It is not in sympathy with the command of Christ, 
who said, "Take up your cross and follow Me." 
This is saying that man is capable of weighing the 



102 Man's Harmonious Development. 

consequences of every thought and action, which is 
an utter impossibility. It would leave every man 
to follow his own appetites, passions, and whims, 
the very thing which the libertine, glutton, anarchist, 
and drunkard does. No, such a theory is untenable. 

So we might go on and name a number of other 
theories relative to the ground of right and wrong. 
But we contend that the grounds of right or wrong 
is, as we have already stated, a feeling within the 
soul corresponding to the knowledge of the same. 
This feeling is innate, original, and independent in 
the soul. 

The feelings of right and wrong do not tell us 
what is right and wrong. The moral nature takes 
on a feeling which must correspond to the knowl- 
edge of the intellect. Here the thought of balance 
or harmony is to be noted. In many cases the intel- 
lect needs enlightenment, while in other cases the 
moral nature needs to be quickened or made more 
responsive. 

The Hindu woman who throws her darling baby 
into the Ganges River has conscience enough, but 
she lacks enlightenment. The Christian woman goes 
to her and tells her that she is doing wrong, and 
tells her why. Then when the poor Hindu woman 
becomes enlightened, or the intellect becomes in- 
formed, she gladly spares her child, and at the same 
time feels a moral approbation. This Hindu woman 
first had a natural repugnance against throwing her 
baby into the Ganges River to be eaten by the 
crocodile, but as her intellect had been taught that 



The Moral Capacity. 103 

that was right her moral nature accordingly acqui- 
esced. Now the Hindu woman has her intellect en- 
lightened, and her moral feelings again acquiesce in 
an opposite belief. 

This shows us how important true enlightenment 
is. The great difference in morality among us, is 
not a matter of conscience so much, or a difference 
of moral fiber altogether. It is much a difference 
of training or enlightenment. 

How often we have seen men and women hold 
tenaciously certain opinions relative to some ques- 
tion of right or wrong. Finally new light was 
found, and these same people turned right round and 
took an opposite stand. Why ? Because they gained 
new light. 

Hence we repeat that the difference between 
one conscience and another, so far as different con- 
clusions are reached, is the difference of knowledge 
possessed and the ability to feel the force of that 
knowledge. The sum of this knowledge and moral 
feeling is character. Reputation is what men are 
supposed to be. Character is what men really are. 
Now the moral capacity rings the character of the 
soul. It calls for right decision. It blesses if the 
right is chosen, but curses if the wrong is followed. 
The moral capacity may be made the pillow of peace, 
or it may be made a bed of thorns whose poisoned 
points torture to frightful dreams. Shakespeare 
says of the peace of the moral capacity : 

" I feel within me 
A peace above all earthly dignities, 
A still and quiet conscience." 



104 Man's Harmonious Development. 

The poet Crabbe writes : 

" O Conscience ! Conscience ! Man's most faithful friend, 
Him canst thou comfort, ease, relieve, defend ; 
But if he will thy friendly checks forego, 
Thou art, O woe for me, his deadliest foe." 

The moral feelings will be certain and pro- 
nounced, in proportion to the intellectual enlighten- 
ment and decision. If the intellect is undecided, 
and is looking for further evidence, the moral nature 
must be suspended accordingly. Many people pur- 
posely avoid light to shun a guilty conscience. They 
care nothing for principle for the sake of principle, 
but do dislike the unpleasantness of a revolting moral 
nature. 

Very often our intellectual decisions seemed to 
have no moral bearing at first, but upon closer ex- 
amination the interests of divine and human rela- 
tions were seen to be at stake, and at once our con- 
science began to approve or disapprove accordingly. 

Before the moral nature is able to feel what is 
right or wrong, all possible data must be collected 
and used to reason to logical conclusion. Many 
people have likes and dislikes, desires and wishes, 
often selfish within themselves, and then mistake 
these for a moral conscience. The thermometer does 
not make the cold or heat, it simply registers the 
actual condition as it is. So our moral feelings must 
be sure to register our real, honest, exact, intellectual 
judgment. Right here is the battle-ground with 
many perplexed souls. Many would like, for the 
present at least, to have or do this or that. Hence 



The Moral Capacity. 105 

they declare that because they desire it, it must be 
right. But if, on the other hand, somebody else had 
or did the same, and they did not desire it, it would 
be entirely wrong. The trouble is this, the selfish 
self is substituted for the real self. This trait or 
weakness is very prominent in children, but should 
have no place in honest, true men and women. 

As we have said, some people have more intel- 
lect than conscience, or moral capacity. They know 
what is right and what is wrong, but they are not 
moved to feeling in the same degree. The ideal 
would be that the moral nature be just as keen in 
its moral feeling, as the intellect is in its mental 
judgment. On the other hand, there are people 
who have more moral feeling than intellectual per- 
ception. Here the ideal would be that the intellect 
be made quicker and stronger in laying a better 
foundation for the moral nature. 

Here we see that a balance of development is 
required. If the intellect is neglected, but the moral 
capacity is cultivated (so far as it can be in that 
limited way) the result must be fanaticism, bigotry, 
and superstition. On the other hand, if the intel- 
lect is enlightened, but the moral capacity is sup- 
pressed, there must be defiance, crime, and finally 
moral skepticism. In both cases, where either ca- 
pacity is cultivated to the exclusion of the other, 
complete degeneration must be the final outcome. 
All possible knowledge must be sought; it must be 
applied, and its philosophy should be understood. 
Then the moral feelings should be obeyed, and kept 



106 Man's Harmonious Development. 

as sensitive as the strings of an eolian harp. Then, 
with skillful hands and delicate harp, sweet music 
would charm the soul to thoughts and deeds sublime. 
There is a disposition on the part of some to 
think lightly of right and wrong. They would make 
it appear that those who dare insist upon the com- 
plete doing of right and the clear avoidance of wrong 
are tyrants. Of course such people say that if any- 
thing bad or calamitous results from a so-called 
wrong course, that is unfortunate. But they would 
make it appear that it was no fault of any evil prin- 
ciple, simply the individual weakness of the one 
indulging. Like the old Spartans, they would say 
• that it is no harm to steal, but it is a weakness to 
be caught. In fact, they claim it is no harm to drink, 
to gamble, to commit adultery, to defraud, or to 
commit any other crime, if it is done in a respectable 
way, and the appearance of gentility and good man- 
ners are, in good dress with a pretended grin, kept 
up. In fact, their whole philosophy is, it is not the 
doing, but the manner of the doing, and the degree 
of innocence pretended, that need have any atten- 
tion. 

Some are not so bold as this class, but nearly as 
inconsistent. They would make two divisions rela- 
tive to the propriety of certain classes doing this or 
that wrong. They say, such and such things would 
not do for the ministers to do, but of course it is no 
harm for the laity to indulge in. But God says: 
"There are no respecter of persons with Him." 
What is wrong for one, is wrong for another. 



The: Moral, Capacity. 107 

He who does the right, stands free before the 
Judge of heaven. But he who does wrong, is an out- 
law before the great bar of Almighty God. 

It is impossible to gloss over crime of any de- 
gree or kind. Filth is filth, and disease is disease, 
no matter what we may call them. Because the poi- 
soned viper is painted in gorgeous colors, that does 
not make his sting any the less deadly. No matter 
what we call crime, filthiness, vice, sin,— the results 
are the same. Right is the starting-point toward 
heaven, but wrong is the starting-point toward hell. 
One is life, the other is death. One is joy, the other 
is misery. 

The essence of moral quality is motive. By 
motive we mean the moral character of our thoughts 
or deeds, whether or not we meant good or evil. 

We may do a wrong act, yet if our intentions 
were good we are free from moral guilt. There 
must be intention, not mere passiveness. It is not 
enough to say, we meant no harm ; but did we mean 
good, is the question. We must think, speak, and 
act in such a way that we have a right to expect 
positive good to result. It is not a question whether 
the surgeon did not mean to kill the patient; but 
did he pursue a course according to his best judg- 
ment which was for the best interests of the patient ? 

So we repeat, it is not a question as to what we 
might not wish from a certain course of conduct, 
but did we act with the highest result in view ? 

This naturally leads us to remark here, that we 
are guilty of doing wrong, in proportion to the pains 



108 Man's Harmonious Development. 

we take to avoid the wrong and of gaining knowl- 
edge according to the importance of the case in 
hand, which might have prevented that wrong. 

Goodness is not exclusive, but inclusive ; not sub- 
traction, but addition ; not passive, but active. If 
a man does good accidentally, that does not make 
him a good man. Or if a man does bad accidentally, 
that does not make him a bad man. His character 
must be as his intention or his motive, and the efforts 
put forth to realize his intention. If he intended 
good, but evil resulted, he must be counted good. 
But on the other hand, if he intended evil and good 
resulted, he must be counted bad. A man is good 
in proportion to the value of his intentions, and the 
effort put forth to realize those intentions. Simply 
to desire a thing is not enough. There must be 
a struggle made to make the intention good. Many 
people mistake wishes for intentions. A mere wish 
without a great struggle to make that wish a fact, 
is nothing but a dead bone disconnected from all 
life or organism. 

To be able to know that this or that is right or 
wrong, and to be able to do the one and avoid the 
other, predicates accountability and responsibility. 
The limit of our accountability and responsibility is 
defined by our opportunities to know, and our free- 
dom to choose and to act. We repeat, that we are 
not so much accountable for what we know, but 
for what we might have known. To refuse knowl- 
edge, is to commit intellectual and moral suicide. 
Our happiness is increased in the same ratio that we 



Thje; Moral Capacity. 109 

seek knowledge and apply it. Our misery is great 
in proportion to the knowledge we refuse to com- 
ply with. 

We must not only do good, but we must have 
the spirit of goodness. Evil suppressed is evil still. 
If evil exists in the soul, or rather if we have an 
evil soul, it will break forth in thought and act, ac- 
cording to the temptation and the walls of restraint. 
If men were as free to do wrong as they are to do 
right, and they still possessed the spirit of evil, what 
crime and woe would deluge poor humanity ! We 
may compel men to obey law, but that does not re- 
generate men. The law is good, but we need the 
spirit of goodness. It is no virtue to simply deter- 
mine not to be bad. We must determine to be good. 
Simply to keep out of mischief is bad enough for 
prankish school children to think about, but men 
and women should resolve to reach the highest possi- 
bilities of positive excellence. 

What further proof is needed to show the de- 
pravity of the human soul, than that it may reach a 
point in its sinful experience where it may enjoy 
a wrong course more than a right one, or that the 
pain of a restrained wrong course is greater than a 
restrained right one ? 

Nothing is so disheartening to the educator and 
civilizer as he beholds the Indian student after grad- 
uation go back to his tribe, lay aside his civilized 
dress, and don again his feathers and blanket. In 
other words, to know that he takes more pleasure 



no Man's Harmonious Development. 

in a shiftless, wild life, than he does in a high, noble 
Christian civilization. 

That man or woman, or boy or girl, can be said to 
be degraded, when he or she derives more pleasure 
in a wrong course than in a right course. And 
we are degraded in proportion to the pleasure we 
may derive in a wrong course above that of a 
right one. 

It is not the amount or the kind of wrong which 
we commit that makes us morally bad ; but it is the 
fact that we choose to follow a wrong course at all. 
In the penitentiary all are criminals. Some have 
committed one crime, and some another, some great 
and some little; but all are criminals nevertheless. 
So in the moral world, if we choose to follow a 
wrong course we are immoral, no matter how small 
that immorality may appear to us. Little sins, and 
big ones, are but weak subterfuges of weak and 
defiant souls who try to palliate the wrong they 
choose. When a wrong course is chosen, the degree 
of crime simply depends upon the disposition, the 
opportunities, or the w^alls of restraint. There is 
no such thing as being partially in a right, and 
partially in a wrong course. If we choose the least 
possible wrong, we are in a wrong course. If we 
choose all right, we are in a right course. "Ye can 
not serve two masters." 

And our appreciation of the right will be in the 
same proportion as we hate the wrong. He who has 
no great regard for the right, will think lightly of 
wrong. To speak most reverently of God, we would 



The; Moral Capacity. hi 

say, He hates the wrong with a perfect hatred, and 
He loves right with a perfect love. We should 
do no less. 

God is right, and He made everything right. 
He also made man so that he might know the right, 
and be able to do the right. God did not give man 
all knowledge at the first, but such as he could un- 
derstand and find out for himself. Neither is man 
bound like Prometheus to a cog-wheel, with which 
he can only move as the cogs mash into each other. 
Man is not a machine, but a winged soul, whose 
flights may be from mountain-top to mountain-top, 
"from glory to glory." God proposed that man 
should work out, by His divine aid, his own salva- 
tion, and in this working out he should find his 
delight and mission. The greatest joy man is ca- 
pable of experiencing is, the discovery and the living 
of Truth. Truth is the knowledge of harmony. 
Right is the feeling of harmony. Wrong is the 
feeling of transgressed harmony. 

Action or expression is the means whereby truth 
is proven and made real. To give expression to 
right feeling strengthens that feeling. To suppress 
the execution of right diminishes the power to ap- 
preciate the right. All growth and joy is the result 
of expression. Growth in fact is the result of mak- 
ing an effort to objectify what is subjective. In other 
words, it is the increment of realization. Without 
expression all is a waste and barren desert. Beauty 
is expressed in the blushing flower, in the fleecy 
clouds, in the diamond dewdrop, and the leafy vine. 



ii2 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Power is expressed in the rushing torrent, in the 
flashing lightning, in the arm of gravitation, and in 
the whirl of the cyclone. Love is expressed in the 
caress and kiss of the fond mother, and in the sacri- 
fice of the Savior on the cross for poor humanity. 
Man is really an expression of God to be expressed 
by himself. Hence it is mightily incumbent upon us 
all to speak and do that which we believe to be right. 
In no other way can truth find its way into the world 
of human destiny. If we believe a certain thing to 
be right, we should say so kindly and with supreme 
conviction. And if we believe a thing to be wrong, 
we should say so kindly and firmly. 

Thus the fact of accountability leads to respon- 
sibility, to expression, and finally to duty. Duty im- 
plies relation. Duty, says Webster, "Is that which 
a person is bound by moral obligation to do, or to 
refrain from doing." The poet Whittier says with 
much force : 

" The stern behests of duty, 

The doom-books open thrown; 
The heaven ye think, the hell ye fear, 
Are with yourselves alone." 

Luther, the lion of the Protestant Reformation, 
knew what duty meant. He spoke: 

" Put thou thy trust in God, 
In duty's path go on ; 
Fix on His Word thy steadfast eye, 
So shalt thy work be done." 

Wellington, that intrepid general, once ex- 
claimed : "I came here to do my duty, and I can 



The Moral Capacity. 113 

neither do nor enjoy satisfaction in anything except- 
ing the performance of my duty to my country." 
What wonder such a man might conquer a Na- 
poleon, in whom was no sense of duty ! 

Duty is the soul saying, "Go, Do, Be !" What a 
feeling is that which speaks within the soul, "I 
ought ! I must !" 

The feeling of duty is often submerged by an 
averse feeling to perform duty. Hence this should 
warn us that when we know a thing to be our duty 
we should do it, no matter how we feel. People get 
so in the habit of doing what they feel like doing, 
that they soon mistake their disinclination for the 
voice of duty. The feelings of conscience are not 
the same as the feelings of the flesh or of selfishness. 
Here is the battle-ground of the feelings — the war 
between the spirit and the flesh. But the soul must 
have the victory. The flesh is a blind, cruel tyrant. 
Duty enlightened by knowledge would carry us on 
to a happy, joyful, successful consummation. But 
mark you, if you turn your back upon the pleading 
and demanding voice of duty, sooner or later your 
frail bark will be dashed upon the cruel rocks, 
where the broken and drifting fragments will for- 
ever tell of an inglorious wreck. 

If we do our duty we shall be rewarded ; but if 
we do not we shall be punished. The nation makes 
a law, and with the law there is a punishment speci- 
fied if the law is not obeyed. In nature, so far as 
the physical laws are concerned, if they are not 
obeyed punishment must follow. The fact of pen- 



ii4 Man's Harmonious Development. 

alty is as much a necessity as the fact of reward 
is just. 

Punishment, in so far as it touches this life to 
reformation, is the warning voice of love. Pain or 
punishment is the signal that would make us turn 
from that which produces it. Not to inflict punish- 
ment would be to stamp approval upon all wrong, 
and leave no way of knowing what is right or wrong. 
Punishment is the result and a warning. It is self- 
inflicted. It is the absence of harmony. As we have 
said, it is a warning that we are doing wrong, and 
should lead to reformation. In the second place, 
it comes as a final result after all opportunity for 
reformation is forever, cast aside. The length and 
degree of any punishment must depend upon the 
character of the crime committed, and the fact of 
reformation while such is afforded. There must 
come a time in the lives of finite beings when oppor- 
tunity for reformation must close ; when that which 
has been sowed must be reaped. Eternal punish- 
ment is based upon the principle of destroying eter- 
nal relationships beyond the possibility of restora- 
tion. Eternal punishment is absolute and final only 
when disobedience has been absolute and final. Eter- 
nal punishment begins when the last moment for 
repentance ends, and that is death. Death ends the 
last opportunity to renew right relation with God 
and man. 

The reasons for and the end of punishment are 
three in number ; namely, preventative, reformatory, 
and consequential. 



The Moral Capacity. 115 

We are prevented from committing further 
wrong either by suffering ourselves or seeing others 
suffer. We are reformed, or caused to forsake 
wrong and do right, because we have suffered our- 
selves, or have seen others suffer. Such suffering 
has awakened us to see the need of reformation. 
Consequential punishment comes when the last 
chance for reformation is put aside. This ends all 
hope, and the loss of hope is the greatest of all pun- 
ishments ! Of course, all punishment is immediate 
to some degree, which, if not heeded, will prove final. 

Let us take warning from the fact, that the longer 
we defer reformation, the less inclined we are to 
reform. And let it be further noted, that the longer 
we defer reformation, the less power we have to 
reform. Let us know, too, that all punishment is 
relative ; that is, if one member or capacity suffers, 
all must suffer with it. The sum total of our man- 
hood and womanhood is either realized or destroyed 
by the harmony or the conflict existing among our 
several capacities. And let it be here stated that 
the degree of pain or sorrow caused by wrong doing 
is greater as we go from the physical to the spirit- 
ual. Physical punishment is animal and temporal; 
but the punishment that follows the sinning soul is 
spiritual and eternal. 

Eternal punishment will not follow as a result of 
ignorance, but the limit of our happiness, and the 
happiness of those with whom we associate, for time 
and eternity will be lessened by our ignorance and 
the inability to know how to live. The highest 



n6 Man's Harmonious Development. 

happiness can only come as the highest knowledge 
is followed by the most perfect doing. This is true 
of the physical as well as those things which pertain 
to the social, mental, moral, and spiritual. 

It is important, then, to ask the question here, 
before passing to the applications of duty, What is 
to determine, or rather what is to help each indi- 
vidual in determining what is right and what is 
wrong ? 

That is, what are some of the immediate tests 
which all may apply with uniform success in judging 
the right and the wrong ? 

As we are Christians, and Christ is the Ideal, we 
must be governed by what He has to say on any 
given question. If, then, there is doubt, we should 
see what the inspired Word of God, other than the 
teachings of Christ, have to say. If, then, we are 
still in doubt, we should see what science has to say. 
If the question seems not to be answered by the 
teachings of Christ, or by the Bible in general, or 
by science, then the experiences of men, assisted by 
logic and philosophy, should be carefully weighed. 
If still there is doubt relative to what is right or 
wrong, then the conclusions of the leaders of Christ's 
teachings should be followed. 

Now if under any circumstances there comes a 
time when it is necessary to apply the above tests 
in order to settle just what is right, or what is wrong, 
they should be honestly applied. It will be impos- 
sible to test all of these means of arriving at truth, 
without the intellect coming to a conclusion, and the 



The Moral Capacity. 117 

moral nature taking on a feeling of either right or 
wrong. Then, no matter what may be our likes or 
dislikes, we should act according to our moral judg- 
ment based upon the impartial intellectual examina- 
tion we have made. Our position relative to right 
and wrong should be always open to further evi- 
dence or conviction. With the increase of age, 
knowledge, experience, and augmented powers to 
investigate, there must come times when some of 
our earlier notions of right or wrong must neces- 
sarily be changed. 

Let us cite one or two things which are held by 
some to be wrong, and by others to be 'right, and 
apply the tests we have mentioned, and see what 
the result may be. First, some say that it is wrong 
to use tobacco, and some say it is right. It can not 
be both. It is either right, or it is wrong. (1) Does 
Christ in any of His teachings say in any way 
whether or not the use of tobacco is right or wrong ? 
In the first place Christ sets up the highest ideal 
possible. He said, "Be perfect, even as your Father 
which is in heaven is perfect." Now, the question 
is, does tobacco make for or does it hinder the attain- 
ment of this ideal ? 

Then Christ said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall see God." Now, we raise the question, 
Is the use of tobacco in keeping with the highest 
type of purity ? Christ also teaches us to care for the 
body. In the light of to-day's science does the use 
of tobacco injure the body? The harmful effects of 
tobacco are plainly taught in every school in the 



n8 Man's Harmonious Development. 

land. In another place in God's Word we are taught 
to "lay aside all filthiness and superfluity." Again 
the question is, Is tobacco filthy, needless, and 
wasteful ? 

Is it not evident now, beyond the shadow of a 
doubt, according to the reasoning of Christians, that 
the use of tobacco is an evil ? 

So with many other debatable questions they can 
be taken up, and with a complete nicety be proven 
to be either right or wrong. 

But not only are we to desist from what is plainly 
wrong, but we are commanded (and it is founded 
in common' sense) to "Abstain from the very appear- 
ance of evil." This principle is amply enforced when 
the yellow flag of smallpox is hung out. The great 
danger is, that people who have not the highest and 
most delicate sense of right and wrong, and espe- 
cially those who do not care to have, try with won- 
derful zeal to widen the territory between right and 
wrong-. They love to make it appear that the divid- 
ing lane between right and wrong is a wide one, and 
that nothing in it is wrong, This lane, however, 
is indeed the devil's lane. It is the questionable, the 
debatable, the doubtful, the shadowy, which, after 
all, lead at the first the masses astray. 

If people took the same precaution in morals and 
religion as they do in business ; namely, "no risks," 
hell itself would be daily denied its deluded victims. 
People seem to think there are no decoys in the 
moral world. There are, however, and on this ques- 
tionable ground is just where they are hung out. 
Beware ! 



The Moral Capacity. 119 

If the spirit of fairness, honesty, unselfishness, 
and a real desire to do what is right are enlightened 
by the teachings of Christ, the general teachings of 
the Bible, the deductions of science, the practical 
experiences of men, and are obeyed, nothing but 
good can result. 

As we have said, duty has reference to account- 
ability and responsibility. We have a decided feel- 
ing within us that we are accountable to some one 
for our manner and spirit of living. And we have 
a decided feeling within us that we are responsible 
for the harm that may result because of a wrong 
course chosen. How quickly the child even, when 
he is conscious that wrong has been done within his 
sphere, asks the question, "Am I to blame for that ?" 
"Was it my fault?" He realizes his accountability 
and his responsibility. 

We are accountable to and responsible for our 
relation to and our actions against ourselves, our 
fellows, and God. 

This now brings us to the point where we shall 
discuss the principle of Duty as it should be prac- 
tically applied. We shall discuss the subject of 
duty under the following heads : Duties to Our- 
selves, Duties to Our Fellows, Duties to God, and 
Duties to all Sentient Beings. 

First. Duties to Ourselves. 
We have a feeling within us, account for it as 
we may, that we ought to do, or we ought not to 
do, certain things with reference to our well-being. 



120 Man's Harmonious Development 

The Creator has put within us a feeling, which is 
in perfect harmony with His laws, that we must 
enforce certain restraints, and enjoy certain priv- 
ileges which have to do with the evil and the right 
of every part of our being. 

Our bodies are given to us as a means to an 
end. As such we are duty bound to keep them 
strong, healthy, pure, and clean. God says in His 
Word: "If any man defile the temple of God, him 
shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, 
which temple ye are." 

The interests of our bodies must be taken into 
consideration before the appetites or passions of the 
same. Many things may be pleasing to perverted 
appetites and passions, but which if indulged in will 
in a short time bring ruin upon us and our posterity. 
The necessities of the body should have a plain 
hearing before the pleasures. The pleasures should 
follow, not lead. To follow our appetites and pas- 
sions is a weakness every man, woman, and child 
should labor to be freed from. 

We have no right to injure the body in any way 
whatsoever. To maim, to weaken, to disfigure, or 
to take our own lives is a great sin. To commit 
suicide is simply self-murder, and we have no more 
right to murder ourselves than we have another. 

So with every capacity of our being, including 
the social, intellectual, moral, and the spiritual ca- 
pacities, we are duty bound, so far as we are con- 
cerned ourselves, to care for and develop these. We 
simply hold these capacities in trust. They are God's 



The; Moral Capacity. 121 

investment, and He holds us accountable for their 
use and growth. 

Every soul should strive to cultivate to tender 
responsiveness that innate feeling, "I owe to myself 
the fullest measure of care and development pos- 
sible." No matter how well we try to treat our fel- 
lows, if we do not treat ourselves well we must 
writhe under a cloud of condemnation, and in a 
short time will treat our fellows as we treat our- 
selves. 

The safety, care, purity, and welfare of our fel- 
lows must find its foundation in the manner and 
spirit with which self is cared for. This leads us to 
consider the second thought of duty, 

Duties to Our Fei^ows. 

It is pitiable ignorance and insolence for any 
person to say : ''Let others take care of themselves/' 
"I have to make my own way; let others do the 
same." Everything we owe to ourselves, we owe 
to our fellows. He who refuses to recognize the 
needs of his fellows most miserably neglects his own, 
for his highest needs are relative. 

"No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to 
himself." The man who has the audacity and the 
ignorance to declare that he owes no man anything, 
is the very man who would be the most miserable if 
he were thrown out with no company but himself. 
Those who refuse to contribute their share to the 
common stock of the world's needs are the very ones 
to make the largest demands for themselves. Our 



122 Man's Harmonious Development. 

interests are so bound together that if they are not 
rightly reciprocated harm not only comes to the one 
against whom wrong has been committed, but the 
one doing the wrong is harmed also. 

It is a great wrong to influence by example, or 
by advice, or to do a thing ourselves, for the sake 
of any reason or gratification whatever, that will 
injure the bodies, social natures, intellects, moral 
natures, or spiritual natures of others. We must 
take up such a course in life, that there can be no 
possibility of doing others injury. We should en- 
gage in no business, profession, or indulge in any 
pleasure where there is the least possible doubt 
relative to the safety of others. This safety also 
must take into consideration every capacity of man. 
God tells us, "If eating meat offends my brother, I 
must eat no meat." That simply means that if my 
life, habits, or business in any way injures others 
I must stop that which injures. 

In the great degeneration and death of mankind 
it matters not so much how men, women, and chil- 
dren are killed. Whether they were poisoned or 
shot is of but very little consequence. The awful 
result is, they are dead! 

It is not the question, who gave the first kick 
or the last kick to the making of a drunkard, liber- 
tine, or gambler, but who gave any kick ? The how 
of the question is not so important as the fact itself. 
It is not a question of moderation, so much as a 
question of principle. 

We emphasize again the fact that we must not 



The; Moral Capacity. 123 

only take into consideration the legitimate rights of 
others, but the weakness of others. The spirit of 
denial must have a large place in the life of a real 
Christian. 

There is but one great sin among men, and that is 
Selfishness. The sin in this is, the quality of 
putting self always before the rights, comforts, and 
highest welfare of others. 

Some feel duty bound to care for the body, both 
for themselves and others, but they do not feel 
obliged to care for the other and higher capacities. 
If they are asked whether or not they believe God 
has given a single faculty which is not their duty to 
cultivate, they will answer, "No." They can not do 
otherwise and be rational. But, can we be counted 
moral in the highest sense, if we fail to do that which 
we believe to be right ? 

The subject of right must touch every duty, and 
it is our duty to cultivate and help others cultivate 
every part of our being. This duty must extend 
from the least to the greatest of duties. In other 
words, every thing must be done which will help 
the greatest development of every capacity from the 
physical to the spiritual ; and everything must be left 
undone which would hinder the greatest develop- 
ment of every capacity from the physical to the 
spiritual. 

It is the duty of children to obey their parents, 
teachers, and in many cases those who are older. 
The fact of obedience reaches to the citizen, student, 
apprentice, employee, and soldier. The highest type 



124 Man's Harmonious Development. 

of duty, however, is that of co-operation. It is our 
duty to co-operate in every movement which has to 
do with our composite development. 

Husband and wife must co-operate to make pos- 
sible the happiest home. Father and mother must 
co-operate to rear their children aright. Citizens 
must co-operate to make just laws, and they must 
co-operate to enforce them. The higher the work, 
and the more far-reaching the same may be, the 
more is co-operation necessary. It is necessary to 
co-operate in order to care for the body, but as the 
social, intellectual, moral, and the spiritual capac- 
ities are more a matter of relation, so much the more 
are we duty bound to co-operate in their develop- 
ment. 

But before any man can fully co-operate in the 
complete development of every capacity, he must 
take God into consideration. This leads us to con- 
sider, thirdly, 

Our Duties to God. 
This feeling is innate. It is original with the 
creation of man. God made man in His own image, 
and with that special distinction He put a feeling 
within him that he must sustain certain relations to 
his Maker. He feels that he is in duty bound to 
worship his Creator, that he is under obligation to 
obey God, and that it is incumbent upon him to love 
God. In accordance with this feeling, God has made 
every provision to help man in the discharge of these 
duties. 



The: Moral Capacity. 125 

To acknowledge God is vitally necessary. If 
men will not acknowledge God, which is the highest 
duty men can enjoy, how will they feel bound to ob- 
serve a lower relation if it is not in accord with their 
choice? Many men observe many lower relations 
with the alacrity of cheer, but if they refuse to recog- 
nize God, the highest relation possible, will they not 
refuse to disregard other relations, if for any reason 
they do not suit them ? We do not mean to say that 
these never take up their cross and do often for the 
sake of others great service. But we ask, having re- 
fused to take up the greatest duty, will they not fail 
often to take up many lower duties ? 

There is great reason why every soul should rec- 
ognize God. First, it is our greatest duty; and 
second, with the performance of our greatest duty 
we receive divine co-operation and willingness tQi 
perform all duties. 

Our relations may extend even beyond ourselves, 
our fellows, and our God to all sentient beings ; that 
is, all things having feeling. This leads us to con- 
sider, fourthly, 

Our Relation to All Creatures of Feeling. 

It is our duty not to cause unnecessary suffering 
in the animal kingdom. It is a mark of civilization 
that humane societies have been organized to protect 
helpless animals. 

Children should be taught to be kind to animals. 
The child who is allowed to treat the cat, dog, horse, 
cow, or bird cruelly, will be very likely to treat his 



126 Man's Harmonious Development. 

fellows cruelly. To my mind, a whip is a cruel 
thing to put in the hands of a child. He soon learns 
to desire to run the whole plantation with the whip, 
or by force in some other way. The whip is very 
suggestive of tyranny. 

It is equally absurd and wrong to put a sword, 
or a toy revolver, or a gun within the hands of a 
child. These stir up the desires to slay, kill, and 
torture. It appeals to brute force. Many a boy was 
taught to be a murderer by thoughtless parents plac- 
ing a toy revolver within his little hand. 

There are enough of innocent toys to be had 
which suggest peace, labor, education, invention, 
amusement, entertainment, and skill, without resort- 
ing to such bloodly instruments as pistols, daggers, 
swords, guns, slings, and spears. A revolver placed 
in the hands of a little boy on Christmas does not 
suggest to him much about the Prince of Peace. 

These are a few of the great principles which 
underlie the facts of right and wrong. We have not 
gone into detail, but have simply brought out the 
grounds of right and wrong, and pointed out some 
of the main duties which devolve upon us as ac- 
countable and responsible beings. 

We have the divine example of right before us 
in the person of Christ and the teachings of His 
Word. We have also the feeling within us that we 
are duty bound to struggle for the ideal. 

All the forces in the universe are making for the 
triumph of the right. "He will not fail nor be dis- 
couraged till he have set judgment in the earth, and 



The MoraIv Capacity. 127 

the aisles shall wait for His law." So says the Word 
of God. Right must finally prevail. 
Shakespeare says : 

" Poise the cause in Justice' equal scales, 
Whose Beam stands sure, whose rightful cause prevails." 

If the Greeks found consolation in the belief that 
their goddess, Nemesis, would finally deal justice 
to every man, how much more should we as Chris- 
tians believe that our Heavenly Father, who knows 
all things and loves all His children, will see that 
they have their just rewards? 

What wonderful strides the Christian world has 
made in the cause of right and justice ! At first men 
dared not think, much less express their thoughts. 
They were made at the penalty of being torn to 
pieces by wild animals, or burned at the cruel stake, 
or torn to bits by wrenching, twisting machines, to 
accept and practice what many knew and felt to be 
wrong. Thousands, yea millions, refused, and wil- 
lingly gave up their lives rather than betray their 
moral instincts and their God. 

Millions were held in slavery, treated like dumb 
cattle, bought and sold to the highest bidder. At 
last by the help of Almighty God men threw off the 
yoke of tyranny, and joyfully leaped out into the 
sunlight of liberty. 

To-day courts of justice sit to hear complaints, 
and to punish according to the logic of evidence. 
Our wrongs may be redressed. 

We have not reached that degree of legislation 



128 Man's Harmonious Development. 

and law enforcement that is most desirable, yet we 
are making good progress, which assures us we shall 
reach perfection some day. 

One hundred years ago slavery was trafficked in 
just the same as any other commodity; the masses, 
including ministers of the gospel, drank intoxicating 
liquors ; atheism was the popular belief of the day ; 
Sabbath desecration went on without thought of 
restraint or reproof; dueling was practiced by the 
most respected in the land; gambling was one of 
the chief amusements, and was considered a legit- 
imate way of making a livelihood; prostitution 
stalked abroad at midday, and social impurity 
alarmed but few to bewail the tendency of the times ; 
profanity was heard on every street corner without 
thought of reproof; bribes were given and received 
in high places, and votes were bought openly without 
fear of protest; highway robbery and petty stealing 
were carried on to the great danger and loss of the 
public, but the offenders could seldom be brought 
to punishment. We might go on and name many 
other things which were done with a wink of ap- 
proval, which to-day are held as grave crimes, but 
we can not take the time. 

Behold what wonderful advancement we have 
made within the last fifty years and less ! Slavery 
has been abolished. Drunkenness is considered a 
disgrace, and the man who uses intoxicating liquors 
is wanted in no man's employ, while a few States 
and a majority of the counties of the United States 
are under strict prohibitory laws. Atheism has no 



The Moral Capacity. 129 

intelligent hearing, and he who believes in no God 
is thought to be certainly demented. Sabbath dese- 
creation is being lessened every year, while the num- 
bers attending divine worship on that day are in- 
creasing. Gambling is prohibited by law, and all 
schemes of chance are not only prohibited by law in 
nearly all of the States, but are allowed no trans- 
portation in the mails. The sending of obscene mat- 
ter through the mails is a grave crime to-day. The 
manufacture and sale of cigarettes are prohibited 
in many of the States. Dueling is not allowed. 
Highway robbery is punished with a swift and sure 
hand. Polygamy is prohibited. And attempts to 
bribe or to buy votes is held as a crime, and can be 
punished by law. 

Hundreds of reforms have been inaugurated 
within the past fifty years, but we have only named 
a few of the most important. Other reforms are 
before the people, and will become laws in a very 
few years. 

In addition to the great strides we have made 
in legislation and law enforcement, we have builded 
hospitals, endowed colleges, built homes for the or- 
phans, the poor, the sick, the deserted, and the dissi- 
pated. The effects of alcohol and tobacco on the 
human system is taught at the expense of the public 
in nearly every public school in the Union. Em- 
ployment agencies are maintained in every city. 
Free lectures are given to the public in many cities, 
towns, and hamlets. Free libraries are open to mil- 
lions all over the land. Chautauquas are held in 
9 



[30 Man's Harmonious Development. 

almost every county and large town, where millions 
gather to be instructed and lifted into a purer life. 
And mightier than all these are the Sunday-schools 
and the Church, which gather within her walls every 
day almost nearly half the population of the globe. 
Here they are taught about God and righteousness. 
Every day these teachings crystallize into laws and 
high moral standards, which in a few generations 
will transform the entire world into a place where 
the "will of God will be done on the earth as it is 
done in heaven." 

We are just in the morning of our moral day. 
As the sun advances toward his moral meridian, we 
rejoice more and more in the health and beauty of 
his beams. Some day he will reach his zenith, and 
there God will command him to stand still as of old. 
Then in the vertical rays of his light every wrong 
will be found and banished, and right will be exalted 
everywhere. 

The visions of many prophets have been reached 
and passed, while the visions of the most heavenly 
are now within sight. We know now that they too 
will be realized in the years to come. They are 
coming ! 



LECTURE V. 
THE SPIRITUAL CAPACITY. 

The spiritual capacity is the topmost round in 
the scale of our being. Our feet walk the earth, but 
our spiritual natures reach up to the great white 
throne of God Himself. Ah, what tall beings we 
may be ! God made man from the dust of the earth, 
but breathed into him His own image or character. 
Thus man is both physical and divine. Indeed, the 
creation of Adam was the beginning of God's in- 
carnation. All men are incarnated in the likeness 
of God, while Christ was God incarnated in the like- 
ness of men. 

Relative to this wonderful estate the poet Bryant 
has beautifully written : 

" Well, I have had my turn, have been 
Raised from the darkness of the clod, 
And for a glorious moment seen 

The brightness of the skirts of God : 

And knew the light within my breast, 
Though wavering ofttimes and dim, 

The power, the will, that never rest, 
And can not die, were all from Him." 

We do not mean here, when referring to the term 
capacity, nor have we meant anywhere in these lec- 
131 



132 Man's Harmonious Development. 

tures, that the soul is divided into several faculties 
or arbitrary compartments. We simply mean that 
the term capacity refers to a certain quality or quan- 
tity of soul essence. God is one, but in Him are 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The soul is one, but 
it has to do with things, principles, persons, and 
God. The different directions the soul takes we 
call capacities. The spiritual capacity is the greatest 
and the best quality of the soul, because it reaches 
up to the Greatest — God. 

Man is the only physical being who possesses 
this divine capacity. The animal in the jungle may 
know and be able to reason more than we may sup- 
pose, but we are safe in saying that he does not in- 
stinctively reach up to God. He can not, for he was 
not created in God's image. Man's ability to reason 
is not that which distinguishes him from the animal. 
The difference is not one of mere intelligence. The 
difference is wide, distinct, and emphatic. Man was 
created in the likeness of Gotf, the animal was not. 
Man was created for God, the animal for man. The 
greatness of man is not shown in his physical 
powers, nor in his social, intellectual, or moral 
powers. His greatness is expressed in his spiritual 
capacity. Man must be great in proportion as he 
reaches up to the Greatest. The sublime character 
of Moses is not shown in his learning, or his states- 
manship, or not so much in his love for the people, 
but it is shown in his great love for God. Indeed, 
the greatness of Moses was but the outflow of God 
from his soul. Yes, man's greatness must be meas- 



The Spiritual Capacity. 133 

ured by his desire and the effort put forth to be like 
the Greatest, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace. 

All truly great men have been God men. The 
world can name many men who were rich, brilliant, 
daring, indefatigable in certain directions, and many 
who possessed great genius, but if these qualities 
alone distinguish them, they hold no warm place in 
the hearts of the world, nor are they held up for 
emulation. Dives, Caesar, Demosthenes, Alexander, 
Rousseau, Byron, Burns, Eliot, Burr, Montaigne, 
and f ayne were of these classes, but who tells the 
young to pattern after them ? 

On the other hand, with what pride every land 
and race of people the world over treasure in blessed 
memory such men as Abraham, Moses, David, 
Isaiah, John, Paul, Savonarola, Luther, Wesley, 
Knox, Milton, Gladstone, Garfield, Lincoln, Moody ! 
Why? Because these were God men. No man in 
the history of the world has conferred much benefit 
upon the same who did not feel drawn out to God, 
and did not, to a greater or lesser degree, submit to 
that feeling. 

The same may be said with reference to the bene- 
fit nations have conferred upon the world. God 
works through nations like individuals in proportion 
as they recognize and follow Him. 

The Jewish Nation recognized and followed God 
for a time, and He through them gave to the world 
the idea of one God, His power, mercy, and nature. 
The Greeks tried to fathom God through the intel- 
lect, and they taught the world how to reason and 



134 Man's Harmonious Development. 

know the philosophy of things. The Romans loved 
power, dominion, code, and trial, and God through 
them gave the world law and the procedure of jus- 
tice. The English loved freedom and the right of 
social representation, and God through them gave 
the world the great Magna Charta of liberty. It has 
been reserved for America, who loves to apply the 
love of God in every detail of life, to give the world 
the highest type of Christian civilization. 

Thus we see the great gifts of nations them- 
selves have been great in proportion as they reached 
up to God. 

We refer to these things because they illustrate 
how important the spiritual is. The soul may reach 
out in many directions, but when it feels after God 
it exerts its profoundest power. Hence the spiritual 
capacity should receive the most careful attention, 
and be cultivated to the highest degree. 

God is a spirit, and we call that nature in the soul 
which reaches out to this Spirit the spiritual capac- 
ity. The grounds for this nature are evident. They 
are : First, there must be a God ; second, He has to 
do with us ; and third, we must have to do with Him. 

There is a God, a First cause, a Supreme Being, 
a Creator and Preserver of all things. This is so 
evident that it is incumbent upon the man who dis- 
believes it to prove it not so. The fact of God is 
more evident than the most patent axiom of math- 
ematics. God says, "The fool has said in his heart, 
there is no God." It does not say he believes there 
is no God. That would not meet the definition for 



The; Spiritual Capacity. 135 

a fool. A fool is one who acts contrary to his best 
judgment. "The foolish man built his house upon 
the sand, but the wise man built his house upon the 
rock." 

Men the world over believe in a God. There 
are a few abnormal souls perhaps who do not believe 
in a God. That, however, does not prove it so. In 
this world of sin, insanity, selfishness, and idiocy we 
may expect to find people who are sadly deficient in 
many ways. 

Some deny the existence of the body, pain, sor- 
row, disease, sin, love, the need of government, and 
the blessing of existence. Every fact in the universe 
is denied by some one. Hence, if we would dis- 
believe in a God because some declare there is no 
God, we would likewise be compelled to banish every 
fact supposed to be well-known to every man. 

Some men have tried to laugh God out of exist- 
ence. In fact, nearly all of the attempts to refute 
the existence of a God have been the silly efforts of 
ridicule, guffaw, and the setting up of a straw God, 
whose brave demolition has caused the ignorant and 
irreverent to giggle their approval. 

If the scoffing atheist were compelled to rely 
upon sound logic and philosophy to prove the non- 
existence of a God, his audience would snore in his 
face or leave his presence. 

Dr. John says: "Man can not banish God from 
the universe by spelling His name with a little g. 
God came before the printer, and His existence does 
not depend upon the size of the letters used to spell 



136 Man's Harmonious Development. 

His name." Man is a thinker, and He who made 
man must be a greater thinker. Man was a thought 
before he was a thinker. And the One who first en- 
tertained man as a thought we call God. God's ex- 
istence does not depend upon the name we may give 
Him. He is the "Great I Am/' no matter what we 
call Him. 

It is not our duty, nor is it necessary here for us 
to prove the existence of a God. His existence is 
too well believed to need an argument even. Suffice 
it to say that the world, the universe, man and his 
relation, his dependence and nature, demand a God 
who is supreme in intelligence, conscious, omni- 
present, eternal, and all-powerful. Without this man 
has no place to begin and no destiny to strive for. 
The non-existence of a God is philosophically un- 
thinkable. Even the heathen poet Horace wrote : 

" He guides below, and rules above, 
The great Disposer, and the mighty King; 
Than He none greater, next Him none, 
That can be, or was : 
Supreme He singly fills the throne." 

We must know that God's character and the 
form of His existence are perfectly independent of 
our feeble and changing conceptions of Him. We 
must know, too, that our conceptions of God are 
not all alike. Our conceptions of God depend upon 
our teaching, ability, education, character, age, and 
many other things. Relative to the main attributes 
of God, however, we may all agree. 



The; Spiritual Capacity. 137 

The second proof of man's spiritual nature is, 
that God has to do with man. God created man. 
He made all things for his comfort, existence, and 
development. Now it stands to reason that the Being 
who created man and made the countless provisions 
we see all about him would in some way be able to 
communicate with the highest object of His cre- 
ation. Shall He who gave the power of speech not 
be able to understand ? Shall He who gave hearing 
not be able to hear? Shall He who gave feeling 
not be able to feel? Is it possible for the Creator 
of any power not to be able to communicate with 
that power ? 

Our notions of the possibilities of God's ability 
to communicate with man must be governed by the 
facts in the case. We must know, too, what a com- 
munication is. A communication is a thought con- 
veyed by one and received by another. The manner 
of the communication has nothing to do with the 
fact of communication. To convey a communica- 
tion by sign, telegraph, feeling, etc., is as much a 
communication as if it were conveyed by speech 
or writing. 

And when we come to examine the ways God 
has of communicating with man, we shall see that 
He makes known His will in many ways. 

God reveals His will to man in the physical 
realm. Man feels hunger, but that is nothing more 
than God telling him he needs food. Man hears the 
approaching storm, but that is nothing more than 
God telling him to escape danger. Man feels pain, but 



138 Man's Harmonious Development. 

that is God again telling him to guard against certain 
things. Thus we see that in a thousand ways in the 
physical world God communicates with man accord- 
ing to the needs of that part of his nature. 

All our prattle and jabber about natural law, 
nature, etc., explains nothing. It is a weak attempt 
to remove God a little farther away. There must be 
a Creator and Mover behind all natural law, etc. 

In the intellectual world God communicates with 
man. He tells man about space, time, beauty, how 
to know the truth, the laws of gravitation, the effect 
of the heavenly bodies, chemical affinity, the phi- 
losophy of all things. These are communications 
such as man is able to understand. Every fact, 
knowledge, truth, the relation and the philosophy of 
them are revelations from God to man. 

God next speaks to man in his conscience. He 
tells him to do the right, and avoid the wrong. 

In the spiritual capacity, however, God speaks to 
man face to face. 

God has adapted Himself to man in every pos- 
sible way. He speaks to man in nature ; He speaks 
to man in His written Word; He speaks to man in 
the person of Jesus Christ; and He speaks to man 
as a spiritual being, into the very soul itself. 

After showing how God communicates Himself 
to man, it is not necessary to even say that man is 
able to receive such a communication. To say that 
God is able and does reveal Himself to man, is to 
prove that man is able to receive such a communi- 
cation. We believe we can know and hear God. 



The Spiritual Capacity. 139 

Our very argument for such an ability is proof that 
we possess such ability. Not only are we able to 
receive a communication from God in nature, in 
tos Word, in the person of His Son, and through 
His Spirit, but we are able also to impart this knowl- 
edge to our fellows. This men do when they write 
any truth, give any true warning, write any true sci- 
ence, description, philosophy, or theology. 

Now that man knows there is a God, that God 
has to do with him, and that he has to do with God, 
fully establishes his spiritual nature. And this leads 
us to say that man is a religious being. 

Man is religious by nature. This is simply an- 
other way of saying that man has a spiritual capac- 
ity ; but we again bring this forward in another form 
because of its importance, and because we wish to 
examine the origin and the development of man's 
religious nature. 

Emerson says : "I am constrained every moment 
to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the 
will I call mine." There is an indescribable, inde- 
finable feeling welling up within us, like a spring 
from the very source of our being, to the Great Un- 
seen with whom we feel we must have to do. We 
look out upon the mighty works of this Unseen 
Being, whose creations the eons of time would not 
permit man to enumerate, whose beauty and sublim- 
ity strike awe to the reverent soul, whose power the 
lighting of electricity but faintly exhibits, whose 
varied harmonies play sweet music from a million 
chords, and whose adaptations tell man all these 



140 Man's Harmonious Development. 

things were made for his comfort, joy, and develop- 
ment. 

Religion dwells originally in every individual 
soul. Religion leads to conversion, not conversion 
to religion. We often hear the remark after some 
one has been converted or "born again," "They 
have got religion now." Such a remark is incorrect. 
Man does not get religion. It is a part of his being, 
no matter whether he is converted or not. Paul said 
of the Greeks : "I perceive that in all things that ye 
are too religious. For as I passed by and beheld 
your devotions, I found an altar with this inscrip- 
tion : To the Unknown God." We see that the mind 
of man naturally goes out to God. This "Over Soul" 
of which Emerson has so profoundly written, is the 
religious nature of man welling up within him. He 
can not suppress it. It is a part of his very being. 
The individual discerns in the depths of his own 
consciousness commands possessing universality and 
necessity which he must obey. 

The atheist is the most absurd egotist living. He 
sets himself up as the greatest "I" in existence. He 
makes himself the only absolute. Such a claim is the 
irony of ignorant folly. 

The religious nature of man begins to assert itself 
when he recognizes personality as the highest prin- 
ciple in the universe, and to which he must give an 
account. The highest principle must be a Person. 
Man feels his own personality, and he will not yield 
to an abstraction, but he will worship, love, and obey 
a Person such as he feels God to be. 



The Spiritual Capacity. 141 

Man knows that he may fool and trick his fel- 
lows, but the Ever-present One he feels knows all 
things, yea, the very thoughts in their formation. 

Knowing, then, that religion dwells in every soul 
as a part of its nature, the religious teacher should 
feel greatly encouraged. Often he feels that he must 
work the individual up to an appreciation of, or 
somehow dawn upon his mind, his relation to God. 
To undertake such a thing is time lost. He has re- 
ligion to begin with, for religion is the conscious- 
ness within man that God has to do with him, and 
he has to do with God. The teacher's task is simply 
to get the man to yield to his religious nature, or the 
voice within. The problem is not to make man re- 
ligious, but to direct and draw out his religious na- 
ture or spiritual capacity. Burn every Bible in the 
world, raze every church to the ground, plunge every 
man back into superstition, ignorance, vice, and 
primitive darkness, and still he would be religious. 
He would begin over again, and with bleeding hands 
and feet mount triumphantly again the glorious 
heights he now occupies. He has gone through cen- 
turies of slow, alternating, varying, painful progress, 
and if necessary he could and would do it again. 

Religion is native to the soul just as much as the 
intellect or the moral nature. The intellect tells man 
relative to certain relations whether they are in har- 
mony with each other. The moral capacity takes 
these relations up, and a feeling of right or wrong 
vibrates through the soul. The religious nature of 
man now asserts itself, and he feels that he is ac- 



142 Man's Harmonious Development. 

countable to a Supreme Being or God for the choice 
he makes with reference to God. 

We have now come to the point where we must 
distinguish between religion and conversion, or 
change of heart. Religion is one thing, and conver- 
sion is another. All men, to a greater or lesser extent, 
are religious by creation. All men are intellectual 
and moral to a greater or lesser degree by creation 
also, but that is not saying that they consciously and 
willingly yield to their best judgment and moral im- 
pulses. So men are religious by nature, but that does 
not say that they yield consciously and willingly to 
the impulses of that nature. To have a capacity, and 
to consciously and willingly let that capacity take 
its true direction, are two different things. Man 
must have a capacity before he can yield to it. If 
it is not original, it can never be put in. All that 
we can do is to educate. We can only draw out 
what was already placed there in the beginning. 

Now the fact of conversion, second birth, change 
of heart, and other expressions meaning the same 
thing is the awakening, and the germ life put forth 
within the soul. The religious nature, like the seed, 
has latent life; but for it to be life and grow and 
come to fruit it must be planted, or come into con- 
tact, or within certain environment. 

Jesus said, "Ye must be born again." Such an 
assertion is scientific. The seed was born once, but 
it can never become life again until it is "born 
again." The spiritual capacity is a seed or a possi- 
bility, and it must be germinated before it can have 
life. 



The: Spiritual Capacity. 143 

A man may be perfectly moral as the world 
judges, but not have eternal life. He has the possi- 
bilities of it, but he must meet certain conditions 
before he can have that life. The seed must be 
placed within the soil before it can germinate and 
really have life. In other words, the birth of the 
seed depends upon the character of its contact. If 
placed in the fire or exposed, the new life will never 
appear. Just so with the religious nature of man. 
It is a seed, and must be placed in a certain relation 
before it can possibly be "born again." This state- 
ment is of paramount importance. Many men, and 
even many so-called Christian workers, are deceived 
and deceive just at this point. No substitution for 
the true relation, or contact, can be made with the 
result of life. If the soul was a thing, it might re- 
ceive a thing as the result of a certain course. But 
the soul is not a thing; it is a personality. Hence 
this soul, this personality, must come into contact 
with the divine environment of God's personality 
before it can have eternal life. He is life, and His 
presence is the only thing that can give eternal life. 

It is not what we do or say merely that makes 
eternal life a fact, but it depends upon what we are. 
It is the character of the soul that entitles it to eter- 
nal life. But the soul can only receive eternal char- 
acter as it is breathed upon and sustained by the 
Eternal One. 

Belief in certain theologies, Church work, benev- 
olence, moral integrity, etc., do not meet the de- 
mand of the second birth, or conversion. These must 



144 Man's Harmonious Development. 

be done to continue the spiritual life, but they are 
not that life. 

The only way possible to receive eternal life, to 
be born again or to receive a change of heart, is to 
yield the whole soul or personality to the Supreme 
Personality, or God, in obedience and love. Then 
in this contact, or environment, the germ of the 
spirit is touched to life. 

This new birth or life brings man and God face 
to face. The door is thrown open, and the Prince of 
Life enters and sups with us, and we with Him. 

Joy ineffable ! Power omnipotent ! Life eternal ! 

Conversion and the evidences of it are two dif- 
ferent things. Right here many fail in the beginning 
of the spiritual life. They look for the evidences of 
conversion before they attend to the first and the all- 
important thing — the full consecration of self to God 
and His service. To do the latter is conversion, 
no matter what the feeling may be. Conversion is 
not feeling, blessing, nor any manner of evidence. 
Conversion is the soul turning to God. It is an act 
of the will. There is no virtue whatever in mere 
feeling. No other act than that of yielding to God 
in love and obedience can be substituted for true 
conversion. The Spirit of God will never take pos- 
session of the soul simply because he has united with 
the Church, or because he has formally received 
water baptism, or because he has resolved to turn 
over a new leaf and do better. The spiritual life is 
not imparted so cheaply. It is the blooming out of 
the religious nature into the very presence of God 
by faith and love in Him. 



The Spiritual Capacity. 145 

If, however, we demand evidences for ourselves 
relative to our relation to God, we may have them. 
They are simple and direct. The first and best evi- 
dence we may have relative to our relation to God 
is, if we have fully given ourselves to God and His 
service He receives us. His Word declares it. To 
doubt His Word, is to doubt God. This is an evi- 
dence which all may apply. 

In all hearts, to a greater or lesser degree, there 
will be a general feeling welling up within the soul. 
''The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit 
that we are the children of God." Again God says, 
"We know that we have passed from death into life 
if we love the brethren." 

Then, too, the world may know whether or not 
we are truly God's. Jesus Himself declared, "By 
this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if 
ye have love one to another." 

The first and last test of a Christian experience 
is Love. Love to God and to man. 

The question is often asked, "When should the 
soul be directed to God ?" This is a most important 
question. It can not be answered dogmatically, 
however. Like all other training, it should begin 
with the child's first ability to respond. Some may 
be able to reach out to God in simple faith when but 
four or five years of age. Others may not be able 
to grasp the thought of a spiritual life until they are 
eight or fifteen. The child should be taught about 
God, his relation to Him, and the simple teachings 
of His Word, at a very early period. Then the child 



146 Man's Harmonious Development. 

should be carefully followed, and as soon as he is 
able to grasp the idea of self-consecration to God 
he should be led to make it, and taught to govern his 
life accordingly. It is not right, nor is it enough to 
let the child drift on and on, thinking that all will be 
well some time. A child may be reared in a Christian 
home, taught carefully the teachings of the Bible, 
and taught to pray, and yet not make a personal con- 
secration of himself to God. The pity of it is, that 
this is true in so many cases. If the child is left to 
himself, no matter how much he is taught about God, 
about the Bible, about life, he may not allow his 
spiritual nature to yield to that ideal within. He 
must be helped to make a personal consecration of 
himself to God and His service. 

The great trouble with the average Christian 
parent, Church, and Sunday-school is, that they do 
not help the child at the earliest period to make a 
personal consecration of himself to the God of whom 
they teach him so much about. Then, finally, when 
he is old enough to be the object of some interest in 
the spasmodic revival effort, he either has become too 
hardened to yield, or he persuades himself the whole 
thing is a joke, or some one else is meant. To get 
the children to consecrate themselves personally to 
God and His service, is the greatest work of the 
Church to-day. 

Now when the soul yields to God and His service 
the time is come for religious training and develop- 
ment. Religious training and development can not 
be carried on until a personal consecration to God 
has been made. This is true of every capacity. 



The; Spiritual Capacity. 147 

If the spiritual capacity is not educated and de- 
veloped, it must soon lapse into a state of indiffer- 
ence and coldness, and finally into a total separation 
from God. It is a fact of our being, that if we do 
not grow, and are conscious of gaining ground in 
whatever we have given ourselves to, we soon lose 
interest, and turn from it. The great Teacher Him- 
self said : "We must grow ; first the blade, then the 
ear, after that the full corn in the ear." 

The different stages of religious development are 
not arbitrary, but natural. And if the individual 
ever reaches the full manhood of a religious experi- 
ence, he must pass through three different periods. 
They are : feeling, symbolism, and comprehension. 
We must not understand, however, that any of these 
periods will be altogether set aside as we pass from 
one to the other. They will not. But as we rise 
from one to the other in a clearer understanding, 
each will be seen to have its relative place and its 
psychological use. 

First, religion exists as feeling. This beginning 
is indispensable. All men have this feeling. Every 
child has it. In the pure state of feeling, which the 
child and the most ignorant heathen possess, that 
feeling within the soul is not accounted for. They 
do not know where it comes from, or what is the 
nature of it. They are a mystery to themselves. 
They do not distinguish between themselves and the 
God who is the cause of that feeling. It is God un- 
recognized in the soul. Now if the individual is not 
able to pass out of this stage, or rather to objectify 



148 Man's Harmonious Development. 

this feeling, and to know that it is something apart 
and above himself, he will become morbid and degen- 
erate into a wretched mysticism or fetichism. We 
have marked examples of this among some of the 
degraded tribes of Africa. They dance about, cut 
themselves, rave and pass into a sort of hypnotic 
condition which is most horrible and most ghastly. 

But this feeling, which is natural and necessary, 
must be directed. It must be known that it is the 
result of a cause working within the soul, and that 
it demands expression and interpretation. This 
stage is symbolism or representation. Mental im- 
ages of God must be formed. He must take on a 
form, or the known. This is the time where the 
incarnation of God in Christ Jesus completely ob- 
jectifies and reconciles the demand of the soul rela- 
tive to the existence and the nature of God. 

We recall that this idea of symbolism is very 
prominent in the Old Testament Scripture. The 
people were in the second stage, and needed sym- 
bols and objective exhibitions to reconcile the mind 
to the feeling within. The danger in this period is, 
that if the next step of full comprehension or insight 
into the true spiritual nature of God is not taken, 
the individual will drift into idolatry. This nearly 
all peoples have done. It required God's constant 
watchings and punishments to keep the Israelites 
free from idolatry. When once the individual rests 
the feelings of his religious nature in an image made 
by .himself, he will not advance to the third step, 
which is the great step. The age or the period of 



The Spiritual Capacity. 149 

symbolism is right in so far as it is governed by such 
images as God has given us, such as a Father, a 
Friend, a Savior, or a Being of power ; but God has 
forbidden us to give them material form. And let 
it be emphasized here, that it is equally wrong for 
us to give God form or hold Him as a material being 
exclusively within the mind even. The soul must 
go out, and know God as the universal, the One 
who is without parts or physical essence. 

This leads us to the third step, the period of com- 
prehension. We rise out of the stage of representa- 
tion when we begin to think of the spiritual essence 
of God. Christ said, "God is a Spirit, and they who 
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in 
truth." This statement of Christ is the very core of 
this last stage in the religious experience. 

It must be reached if the individual ever rises 
into a rational, or even a satisfactory religious expe- 
rience. We are compelled to believe that many do 
not rise to the full conception of this necessary real- 
ization of God. Too many remain in the period of 
childish or even idolatrous experience. This is evi- 
denced by many who hold to forms and ceremonies, 
and do not see that they are but helps to lead the 
soul to the true thought behind the form or symbol. 
The forms or symbols are right, as God has given 
them to us ; but they must be known simply as means 
to help the mind grasp the thought behind the form 
or symbol. 

The religious teacher of the children should know 
perfectly these different steps in the religious train- 



150 Man's Harmonious Development. 

ing or development. He must be able to help the 
child to form representations of the spiritual, and to 
distinguish God apart from himself, and then at the 
proper time lead the child to the true spiritual idea 
of God and his relation to Him. It is a great mis- 
take to pass out of one stage into another too soon, 
and it is equally wrong to remain too long in one 
stage. 

When the individual has come to the develop- 
ment of clear insight, or a rational comprehension of 
God and his relation to Him, he begins to form doc- 
trines or beliefs relative to God, man's relation to 
Him, and to his fellows. This can not be prevented. 
The individual must not, however, rest in simply 
hugging to abstract doctrines or beliefs about God, 
etc. It is possible that one may be a theologian and 
not a Christian. He must note the relation, and the 
rational connection of these dogmas or doctrines; 
what their logical result must have on the life ; what 
are the grounds of these doctrines, etc. Right here 
is the time when skepticism is very likely to show 
itself. It is almost a wonder if it does not. The 
mind in this stage becomes bewildered. He beholds 
dependence on the one hand, and independence on 
the other. He sees doctrines; but then he knows 
that they are but the husks holding a great truth. 
He sees each successive step proves the next to be 
the most important, while it may hint that the one 
just taken was of no importance. 

And in this confusion he feels that he is forced 
from nowhere to nowhere, or from the delusion of 



The; Spiritual Capacity. 151 

the past to the delusion of the future. This, indeed, 
is skepticism. 

The individual must understand that all truth 
comes to us but a piece at a time, or in parts. And 
that as we advance we are compelled to go back and 
restate our positions again. It must be known, how- 
ever, that this is no fault of the truth, but that it is 
proof that we at first did not grasp the full truth. 
We never shall. Truth is infinite. We must know 
that life itself is simple adjustment to the evolution 
of the soul. That it is the soul reaching out to the 
ideal, and as rapidly as the soul advances the ideal 
advances. That must be true. Whenever the soul 
rests content with the grasp of its ideal, it reaches 
the dead line. It must from that on decay. 

Hence the highest activity of the soul is to see 
in the changing forms of the ideal the infinite real 
leading to perfection; that all doctrines, their rela- 
tions and necessity, must be realized into a perfect 
manhood and womanhood; that their use is to lead 
us to "A full-grown man, unto the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ." This is God's 
ideal for us. Our perfection in God's sight is not 
the attainment of this ideal, but it is the perfection of 
the effort we make to attain it. 

We must now speak in a few words of the prac- 
tical process of religious education and training. As 
the spiritual capacity is the most important in our 
being, it stands to reason that God would Himself 
make some provisions for the education and the 



152 Man's Harmonious Development. 

training of the same. This we find He has done by 
giving us the Church, His Word, and His Son. 

Here the individual is led to make a consecration 
of himself, to worship with his fellows, and to recon- 
cile his lot in life to the great purpose of God in 
Christ Jesus. 

In this consecration the individual is led up to 
God ; that by doing good he allies himself with God, 
and by doing bad he separates himself from God. 
He learns, too, that wrong becomes sin, that good 
becomes holy, that every act has its God side, and 
that God holds him accountable, and that he is re- 
sponsible for his sins of omission as well as com- 
mission. 

The Church is God ordained. ''Christ loved the 
Church, and gave Himself for it." Any organiza- 
tion which has for its aim the teaching of God's 
Word, the worship of God, the mutual helping of 
each other to the ideal God has set in Christ Jesus, 
and the spreading of the kingdom over the earth, is 
a part of the true Church which was organized in 
the wilderness by Moses under the command of God, 
and rebaptized on the Day of Pentecost, and sent 
forth into the world to conquer it for Himself. Most 
of the Jews sidetracked themselves, but they did not 
sidetrack the true Church. The original Church is 
going on. There are many branches of it here and 
there over the entire world. 

There can be no great development of the relig- 
ious nature without some membership in some one 
of the different branches of the true Church. If one 



The Spiritual Capacity. 153 

can be a true Christian without Church membership, 
all can. If all can, the Church is not a necessity. 
And if the Church is not a necessity, then Christ 
availed nothing by "loving the Church, and giving 
Himself for it." 

To refuse to become members of the Church 
militant, is to reject the Church triumphant, for they 
are one and the same. The duty of Church member- 
ship is of more importance than some trivial reason 
we may have for not uniting with it. No one can 
have any appreciation of Christian fellowship, if he 
is not a member of some Christian Church. And if 
he does not soon unite with some Church and take 
an active part in it, he will soon drift from the smiles 
of "Him who loved the Church, and gave Himself 
for it," into indifference and final apostasy. 

The individual must guard against the danger 
of substituting the form of worship, or the comfort 
of being allied wth the Church, for the real worship 
and fellowship which the former simply represent. 
These are but means to an end. They are vital and 
necessary as such. The Church lifts each member 
into higher regions of faith ; it brings the great and 
small, the rich and poor, the ignorant and the 
learned, into one common band whose aim and faith 
are one, and whose lesson teaches that they are 
brothers and sisters of a common Father. Together 
they lift their voices, "Our Father, which art in 
heaven." Here he learns that the kingdom of God 
must be taken to every part of the world, and that it 



154 Man's Harmonious Development. 

is a part of his mission to help God establish His 
kingdom upon the earth. 

The last step of religious training and experience 
is man's reconciliation with his lot in life. Here he 
learns to trust God, to adjust himself to the will of 
God with patience, and to rise above the trials, 
temptations, vexations, and weariness of life itself. 
The soul must know that God is constantly working 
out for it a sublime destiny, whether we feel it at all 
times or not ; that when the heart is sick, the vision 
of life clouded, hope almost gone, and the hold on 
eternal things seem to be giving way, God is near 
to help, cheer, and sustain. In fine, we have reached 
God's way when we can say with Paul, "I walk by 
faith, not by sight." 

The possibilities of the spiritual life are infinite. 
The body soon reaches its maturity, and it soon de- 
cays and dies. But the spiritual capacity may grow 
on and on, ever increasing in stature, beauty, and 
power, which the flight of years but usher us more 
and more into the spring of immortal youth. We 
pick up a little pebble on the shores of time, and 
note that it is a part of one great system. Then we 
go from the pebble to the mountain, from the moun- 
tain to a continent, from a continent to a world, 
from a world to a universe, and from a universe to 
system after system, until at last we are lost in the 
maze of God's mighty and endless creations. Just 
so with the development of the spiritual capacity. 
We note in it the pulse of the great heart of God, 
then we see the will throw open the soul to let the 



The Conclusion. 155 

Prince of Glory enter. He enters ! He reigns ! The 
soul is led out and out, and on and on, and up and 
up, until in joy and ecstasy the heart burns with love 
divine while it sweeps through the music of endless 
eternities upon the bosom of the loving Savior and 
Father. 

Death itself loses all its terror in such an experi- 
ence. Hope shines like an eternal morning. And 
when this body lies down to rest awhile, the soul 
with the poet would say of itself: 

" Say not, ' Good-night,' but in some fairer clime 
Bid me, ' Good-morning!' " 



THE CONCLUSION. 

It has been our aim in these lectures to set forth 
the nature of man's different capacities, and the 
philosophy of their development. 

As we stated in the beginning, it has not been 
our aim to go into detail, or to treat these different 
capacities in a technical manner. 

Our aim has been to present the subjects in a 
practical way, and at the same time give the average 
person a bird's-eye view of his being and life as he 
himself must deal with it each day of his existence. 

Our task now is to show how these different ca- 
pacities must be harmonized together, in order that 
the ideal life, for time and eternity, may be realized. 

But before we are able to harmonize anything, 



156 Man's Harmonious Development. 

we must know what is to be done, and what is the 
key or pattern by which it may be done. 

The first thing to ask and to settle is, what is the 
object of life itself? If man is an animal, and has 
no higher destiny than this present life, there is no 
use to discuss this subject any further. Let him eat, 
drink, and make a fool of himself generally, and the 
sooner his mere existence comes to a close the better. 

But if man was created in the image of God Him- 
self, and has a destiny before him reaching out into 
the rosy mornings of eternity, and if the joy or the 
sorrow of that eternity depends upon his approach 
to that image in which he was created, then we 
should answer this question thoughtfully, seriously. 

If we were made in the image of God, the object 
of our lives must be to evolve that image. We can 
find happiness in no other way. He who undertakes 
it is "a thief and a robber." He steals and robs from 
God, himself, and all with whom he may come in 
contact. 

Happiness, joy, and soul contentment, for time 
and eternity, are simply results. Sorrow, misery, 
and discontentment, for time and eternity, are simply 
results also. Either condition is experienced because 
the right or wrong object of life is chosen. Here is 
the beginning of our free moral agency. Here is 
the beginning also of life or death. Truly the su- 
preme object of life is to bring forth the image of 
God originally stamped upon the soul of man. 

True education must draw out of the soul the 
highest and the best. But to do this there must be 
an objective ideal to pattern after. In other words, 



The Conclusion. 157 

in order to attain the real, the subjective and the 
objective must be harmonized together. Thus we 
see that a pattern, a model, an ideal without, is de- 
manded. This model, this ideal, this real image of 
God is set forth in a second incarnation. God first 
incarnated Himself in the soul of man, and the sec- 
ond incarnation was God Himself in the person of 
Jesus Christ. 

Now, our task is to bring God within the soul 
and God in Jesus Christ together. What a beautiful 
task! And the joy of the result! Eternal life! 

Yes, Jesus Christ is the Ideal, and the One who 
alone can help us realize the Ideal. He is the 
"Mark," and He is the power ! We see with what 
solicitude He cared for the body; how He mingled 
among men in every relation of life ; how He stirred 
the intellects of men, and scattered truth over the 
world like golden grain upon a field ; how He went 
to the very core of right and wrong, and tore the 
mask from every sophistry ; and lastly, how He 
opened the great heart of God Himself, and told us 
how to meet the smiles of our Heavenly Father, and 
live with Him forever. 

We are in a position now to discuss the harmony 
of our several capacities. 

The work of life is not to provide for this or that 
capacity, or part of our being. It is to provide for 
all, and to harmonize all according to the Ideal set 
forth. Do we wonder that there is so much war, 
misery, suffering, discontentment, when we see now 
the true object of life, how it is to be attained, and 



15S Man's Harmonious Development. 

then note how far the masses are blindly wandering 
from it? 

There should be no war among the several capac- 
ities. They were made to be harmonized. One is 
just as sacred as the other. All must stand or fall 
together. The physical, social, intellectual, moral, 
and the spiritual capacities are the vibrant chords of 
the soul's harp, which if harmonized by the key of 
the Christ life, sweet music will charm us at every 
step through the cycles of endless eternities. 

To secure and maintain harmony among the sev- 
eral capacities is the question. If we keep the Ideal 
before us and work to it, harmony must result. 

But to come nearer the solution of the principle 
of harmony, let us note that three elements must 
enter the practical solution of the same. They are 
Thought, Time, and Cultivation put upon the several 
capacities relatively. 

The masses to-day spend about the following 
average of thought, time, and cultivation upon the 
several capacities relatively: Physical capacity, thir- 
teen hours, with say seven hours sleep. This makes 
twenty hours. Now, you see there are only four 
hours left for the social, intellectual, moral, and the 
spiritual capacities. This is wrong. It is a lamen- 
table mistake. It is against the teachings of Christ 
the Ideal, and against the theory of a balanced man- 
hood and womanhood. Christ said, "Seek ye first 
the kingdom of God." We reverse His command, 
and then wonder why we are what we are. 

You say to give each capacity proportionate 
thought, time, and cultivation would necessarily rev- 



The Conclusion. 159 

olutionize things. Indeed it would, and that is just 
what is needed. The trouble is, you say, the average 
man can not demand his time for such a symmetrical 
cultivation. He can if he gets the true idea of life, 
and will make a desperate effort. It is being done 
to-day by many who are even poor in this world's 
goods. Let me impress this thought upon your 
mind. If our thought, time, and efforts were propor- 
tioned over a symmetrical development, we would 
have greater powers with which to make a livelihood 
in less time than we now do. The hours beyond a 
proper proportion now contribute to the excess of an 
intemperate existence. The emphasis of life is placed 
upon material things and the pleasures of the flesh. 
The Christian and the sinner are rushing headlong 
together after the things that perish, while the great 
and lasting things are neglected. So far as the aver- 
age Christian and sinner are concerned in this most 
important matter, one can not be distinguished from 
the other. Even many children are taken out of the 
school to help ruin forever the very possibility of an 
ideal life. 

The cry once was, "To make a living ! a living !" 
The cry now is, "To make money ! to make money ! 
Money \" The cry should be, "To live ! to have that 
abundant life ! life !" 

If this idea of life were seized upon, there would 
be no fatigue, no tired bodies and brains, no disease, 
no sickness, no sorrow, but every motion of body 
and brain would be joyful exercise. It would be 
harmony, music ! 



JUN 10190b 

1 60 Man's Harmonious Development. 

Ah, many say, "It ought to be, but it never can 
be so in this world of ignorance and sin." True, in- 
deed. But we must be educated and Christianized. 
Then this complete harmony of all the capacities 
making toward the Ideal, the Christ Himself, will 
be realized. It will be done. It must be done. It 
is for each of you to say whether or not you will 
continue to live the animal life, or whether you will 
live the balanced, symmetrical, harmonious life as 
set forth by the Son of God. Reduce the thought, 
time, and efforts put upon the body, and proportion 
them over the others. I will not say what that pro- 
portion should be, but will say that in order to pro- 
duce harmony among the several capacities and meet 
the approval of God extreme changes must be made. 

From the first whisperings of God to man until 
to-day, He has labored to bring forth the ideal man. 
But men have been slow to catch His thought. The 
struggle has been between the flesh and the spirit. 
The flesh up until to-day claims the masses. But the 
ideal, harmonious man, like unto the Son of man, 
is rising like a towering mountain out of the ocean 
just a little beyond. The hope and smiles of God's 
love already shine upon it in radiant beauty. Its 
sublime and towering dimensions can now be dis- 
cerned. The fragrance of its fruits and flowers fill 
the air. The music coming from the many chords 
of harmony is heard. The world is turning to ad- 
mire it. It is the vision of a perfect manhood and 
womanhood. 



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